


Serendipity

by Leonia42



Series: A Violet in a Snowstorm [9]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Action/Adventure, Coerthas, Drama, Dravania, F/F, F/M, Family, Friendship, Heavensward, Mystery, Stormblood, introspective, ul'dah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2019-06-27 19:28:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15691887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leonia42/pseuds/Leonia42
Summary: “You like to imagine people think about you when you’re not around but they don’t, they have their own stories to live and why should that bother me. I’ve been discovering who I am too long, by the time I see them next I won’t be the same person they knew. And they won’t be the same either. It almost makes it impossible to hold onto other people, to think of them as anything other than tools to help see your own goals done."Even when Venice is focused on finding herself, she manages to help others. Through her various friendships, she begins to see what she must do. Ready at last to commit her emotions to words, the politics of Ishgard prevent her from getting close enough to try. As one mystery comes to a close, she must wait for conditions to change. One day she will be a knight and none will doubt her loyalty to the cause.[Continues where "Ardent Daughter" left off, still takes place between 4.1 and 4.2, may contain DRG 50-60 spoilers among other things]





	Serendipity

There was little Venice could do in the city while the Inquisition was at work, it seemed prudent to give them a wide berth until she was needed. In the meantime, she joined Estinien and Heustienne in Dravania on their patrols, not wanting to be far away if she was called in. The fresh air did wonders for her spirit, no more stuffy rules or dresses, no political gambits to elude, just the wind rushing past her chocobo’s saddle. She thought of many things, the past, the future, the person she was turning into.

Her companions kept mostly to themselves, lost in their own seas of reverie. Full glad was she that the pair of them had come to a mutual understanding, neither could conquer their fears alone. Though they spoke little, she could see Heustienne regard Estinien as an equal, he was rising to the occasion and learning much about himself in the process.

Every day she waited for the moogles to deliver Aymeric’s letters. They bore mostly prescriptive updates of recent events, often regarding the movements of the Inquisition as well as other minor inconsistencies. But once in awhile, he managed to channel some of his indescribable emotions into short, heartfelt poems or snippets of stories playing in the back of his mind. Never revealing too much but allowing her to see he was coping, or at least trying to go through the motions without her to hand.

He allayed her concerns about the renewed attempts on his life by explaining that Lucia was tending to personal guard duty, maintaining her emotional distance but not leaving anything else to chance. While comradeship was sought, her silent presence became more than suffocating, he had to find ways to distance her from the fired up Inquest without hurting already hampered unrests. Venice felt guilty for leaving him to sort through the fraying threads but she also needed time for herself.

She didn’t discount the effect that a loaded work life was having on him but the more she reflected, the more certain she was that he needed challenges to give him purpose and direction, those were the moments he lived for most and whatever else was pulling him under was beyond her scope. Some day she would have to break him out of that routine, for her benefit just as much as his. Though she was eager to get back to her own journey, there was an empty seat beside her that only he could fill.

Her companions did their best to make her feel welcomed, not asking her to clarify her melancholy mood, but she did appear to be a third wheel disrupting their uneasy balance of mentorship. Estinien wanted to teach Heustienne how to harness her tainted blood for good rather than ill but she was not the slightest bit confident in her ability to retain her own mind whilst transformed. They tested each others’ patience to their utmost limits, the blind leading the blind.

Venice often got caught in the middle, being pulled by one side or the other in their boiling arguments. How were two warriors of the lance to make sense of working with their former enemies? Were they not unsettled enough about who they were as individuals in a post-war setting? The impenetrable conundrum, the selfsame question everyone was scrutinising; she couldn’t escape it any more than the heretics who had boldly proclaimed their defiance to the Inquest.

Each day had a rigid routine. In the mornings they meditated near the waterfalls, in the afternoon they sparred with Vidofnir’s kin, in the evening they patrolled either on foot or wyvern-back for any who would bring discord to dragon kind. Late at night, they gathered under the stars to let Venice ease them with stories, her tales condensed like hidden pearls of fiction silhouetting granules of truthful sand.

“Who taught you to braid like this?” Estinien asked innocently, Venice once more wrestling his silky strands through her nimble fingers, resorting to merely brushing out the bits of ash spewed out daily from the summit of Sohm Al.

“My mother, about the only affectionate thing she did for me,” Venice answered.

She could hear Heustienne’s steel-pointed boots clawing against the rockface as she made to reach the surface, their quiet little spot where they camped most nights. Estinien was relaxed, eyes closed, ears twitching on occasion as he picked up the strains from the dragons hunting nearby. He was like a monk lost in his devotions, serene and at peace. There amongst the terrifying beasts and an active volcano, he had discovered solace. His home, his trueself.

His counterpart, however, was unable to find either of those things, too worried about the life she had been forced to relinquish. “What did your mother look like?” Heustienne asked once her breath had been recaptured, pulling herself up to sit next to the pair. Estinien tensed at the sound of her voice, the moment spoiled. Venice’s fingers continued their weave, soothing him back down.

“She had ebony skin, much darker than my own, somewhere between a rich, creamy chocolate and a freshly prepared black coffee,” her words came out in the form of musical notes, like a lulling ballad, a product of spending many days immersed in the homeland of dragons, “Well, I shouldn’t refer to her in passing, she is still very much alive.”

_For all the good that has done anybody._

“Her eyes are akin to warmly glazed almonds; glazed _over_ would be far more accurate. She could spy nuggets of devilish gossip from malms away, anything that could be used to her benefit. Her hair is as dark as the sky is now, always thrown up in some new form or another to draw attention, rarely practical but always stunning.

Her worth was determined inversely by the misery of others, never happy with what she had. She was not to be blamed for her she had a child without a third eye without any prospects, everyone had to feel sorry for her or she’d have nothing.

Must have caused her a great inconvenience when she couldn’t rely on that excuse any more..”

“I can’t recall memories of my own mother,” Heustienne looked off into the distance.

Choosing to comfort another over prattling on about herself, Venice encouraged Estinien to sit up and trade places with his fellow dragoon.

“Your father more than makes up for the lack of her presence,” she said warmly, patting the ground. Even with the sun down, Heustienne’s honey blond hair shimmered like the gold ambrosia procured by the deadly wasps of the Arboretum, her amethyst eyes were bold and determined. Though Estinien’s guidance was not easy to adhere to, she would see her training through to its completion.

“Don’t tell anyone you saw me like this,” he warned her, embarrassment creeping into his voice.

“What, that the former Azure Dragoon has a soft side? I’m sure Vidofnir would love to know,” Heustienne teased.

“Especially not her!” he growled, going a bit pink in the cheeks. He grabbed his lance and began polishing the tip, pretending nothing was out the ordinary.

The two women laughed, Estinien grinned though he did his best not to let them witness.

“Thank you for being the intermediary for our correspondences,” Heustienne said to Venice, sitting flat while the highlander held her within her knees. “The moogles rarely come out this far and the ones in Moghome are, er. If cuteness were a disease, I think they are all infected, possibly contagious.”

Estinien definitely snorted at that.

“I barely remember my parents now, the sounds of their voices or the way they got between my brother and I when we played rough, the memories feel..tampered, a leftover of Nidhogg in my head..I don’t think they’ll ever come back as they once were,” he said after a while.

“I overhead you two talking about finding the one memory worth holding onto to retain your trueselves,” Venice said delicately, thinking the moment was right to ask. “What did you think of when all hope was lost? Was family sufficient or did they make you wish you could join them?”

“Those were that very thoughts that left me vulnerable to corruption in the first place,” he shook his head, placing the lance back on the ground. Death had been his silent companion many times, Nidhogg tipping the scales. Long ago in Garlemald, Venice had felt its alluring hand, beckoning her to give up a lost cause. It was hardly unusual that broken souls would cross paths over and over. Ishgard was in no short supply of the lost.

“Estinien held fast to his sense of duty,” Heustienne interrupted, unsure whether she was overstepping her bounds. Estinen nodded in the affirmative, placing a hand upon her shoulder.

“Aye, there are no secrets amongst us,” he sounded wise and confident. “My fear of letting Aymeric down kept me from succumbing to death’s call. I could not add another notch of disappointment to his belt. When someone believes in you more than you believe in yourself, there is more power in that than all the aether in the Eyes. Our bond has ever been complicated but I think he knew that, somehow.”

“I believe a similar bond is being forged between us though I like to imagine we’ll be there for the good times as well as the bad,” Venice said quietly.

“Perhaps my desire to honour my father will be enough,” Heustienne decided for herself. “If I die, I cannot bring redemption to our house.”

“During our worst moments, we lean on the ones we love and hope we don’t compromise them in the process,” Estinien professed his agreement.

“It broke Aymeric’s heart to point that arrow at you,” Venice choked on the vivid memory, pretending it was a bit of ash caught in her throat.

“Wasn’t the first time he felt that, won’t be the last. I have to keep going, I need to be a better man than I was back then,” his grey eyes moved towards his apprentice, “It’s alright if you fail, Heustienne, because I won’t fail you. When we can control the blood, we can make an army of wyvernkin that will serve beside us, as allies and perhaps as friends.

In the long run, we are helping Aymeric achieve his vision for a stronger, better Ishgard. This isn’t about just one or two dragoons getting their shit together, none of us can go it alone any more. Even dragons choose to have a mate for life though they do not need to do so.”

To emphasise the point, he reached not for his legendary Gae Bolg but for Peregrine, the long jousting style lance favoured by House Vimaroix for generations. First he heated the tip along the smouldering flames, then he began to smother the rest of its head with a freshly watered down rag, as if it were his own, sparing no detail. Heustienne’s purple eyes turned blue with tears, the gesture intimate and true.

Carefully, Venice began to excuse herself, knowing that her time to depart had arrived.

“We all have a place, this time of our own choosing,” Venice said more to herself than the others, whistling for her steed.

Idyllshire was dark and quiet when she arrived, leaving her to half-stumbled through the door to Cyr’s apartment. Moonlight drifted in, showing a fresh planter near the window, cuttings from her homesick bouquet were taking root, flourishing in her absence. Thought she was blessed by many wonderful people in her life, she could not neglect any of them for too long.

The bedding in her room had been thoroughly cleaned, the smell of lavender and rosemary emanated from her beckoning pillow. Pulling off her clothes, she slipped under the blankets in her undergarments. While her head was left in the clouds, craving a recess of adventures past, the rest of her stood back on the ground, pondering whence her centre would be put to the test again.

\---

Her mind recreated the scene from the Grand Company banquet at Dragonhead, replacing the top brass dignitaries with the members of the Alliance council. They sat around a large table covered in various dishes, bottles of wine at regular intervals, the evening winding down to some extent. She was between Aymeric and Merlwyb, Kan-E-Senna to her right, then Raubahn on the far end, the last was flushed in the cheeks and antsy, barely able to remain stationary. The rest of the leadership looked on warily to see who might calm him down.

“None of this would have happened if he hadn’t lost control of the Eyes!” Raubahn roared at Venice.

“None of us would be here now if not for your cowardice regarding Ilberd!” Venice stood up, shouting across the table.

“Caution, Venice,” Kan-E-Senna said delicately.

“We have been cautious, where has that gotten us?” she retorted.

“We are stronger now for our new allies, thanks to you and yours,” Merlwyb added, oddly becoming the voice of reason in the debate.

“That doesn’t give us the right to invade any enemy territory we so choose. I don’t discount the need for our arrival in Ala Mhigo but you are not treating your new friends equally. Not one of the Maelstrom’s ships have delivered aide to Doma when they are in most need, having no garrison force to protect them.”

“It just isn’t feasible right now, not that this is the time or place for such a discussion,” Merlwyb dismissed her concerns, brushing her aside.

“When will we discuss it then?” Aymeric chimed in at last, hesitant about Venice’s intentions but not leaving her to fight alone.

“What happened to showering allies with a reprieve for all their hard work?” Raubahn sneered, finishing the remains of his goblet. “We did not come here to talk but to drink!”

“You were invited out of courtesy, not because you are a member of the leadership any longer.”

“I suppose the same sentiment was offered to the Warrior of Light. Or is she expected to serve at the side of her new master?”

“Do not speak to him like that!” Venice interjected. “I am a lady of House Fortemps, I have every right to be here.”

“Then in that case, I will not take your comments as representative of the Scions.”

“Like you give a shit what the Scions think, we are not your tools of war to be used as you see fit. How are we to offer an alternative to Garlean enslavement if we do not behave any differently from our enemies.”

“You could have been more forthright about your heritage,” Kan-E-Sama pointed out.

“What would that have changed!”

“Do you think us so heartless? While you hid in Ishgard, we kept your other enemies at bay,” Merlwyb pointed out.

“For which I am grateful, truly. But we're not talking about then. We need to be talking about now. The Garleans have been working in the shadows. Here, in Ishgard. They’ll no doubt be doing the same in your respective cities. We have to prepare for an insurrection.

We need to build a fleet of armed ships. We should be devising a way to travel to Garlemald. Storing up our resources, shoring up our allies, and so on.”

“We are, Venice, _slowly_ , the pieces are moving into place,” Aymeric offered. “But you’re right about extending our influence. I have been doing what I can to let Doma know they are one of us-”

“We didn’t come here to discuss these matters, are you quite done making a fool of yourself, Venice?” Raubahn was clearly exhausted by the exchange, his grip on his self-control loosening with each extra drink he downed.

“Want to take this outside so we can show everyone who is the greater fool again?” Venice snapped.

“I don’t need to entertain you, or anyone. The war is over lass, get over it,” he got up to leave.

“ _Get over it_? You call yourself a general but you couldn’t plan a route out of a wet paper bag let alone a meaningful longterm strategy against an enemy that holds every advantage over us. Sure, you’ve killed a lot of men. So have I. That doesn’t mean a damn thing.

You could have prevented all of this or at least lessened the damage. But you didn’t yield to greater minds across the war table, you thought only of yourself as you always do. You didn’t pause to consider what failure might look like, what peace might look like. Only one man at that table has done both of those things. Couldn’t pass up the glory, could you? Forgot what you were damn fighting for once you could smell the salt on the air.

But what does on expect from a raging bull who can only think of ramming his member against the gates until they part, right?”

The air was electrifying. Raubahn was spitting daggers with his grey eyes, shoulders heaving with irritation. Kan-E-Senna had turned a lovely shade of pink while pretending to be interested in the floral decorations, Merlwyb took a large slug from her tankard before slamming it down empty. Aymeric looked as if he wanted to disappear, hesitating to glance through his fingers at what profanity Venice would sling next.

“What do you know of the suffering of my people!” the Bull shouted.

“I know you stopped caring a long time ago. For all his faulty execution, Ilberd had the right vision.”

Raubahn was ready to render her limb from limb, reaching for a sword that was no longer there.

“You’re just another fucked up father relying on your son to do the right thing,” she dug again. Aymeric reached for her leg under the table, giving her an affectionate pat in gratitude with the dual intent of soothing her blistering rage.

The former Flame General said nothing, wisely choosing to walk away from the situation, too drunk to care by then.

Venice got up to follow but Aymeric discouraged her from doing so, “You do realise how precarious this game is, right?”

“I do and it’s not a game, they have no idea what they’ve started and we’ll be the ones to pay the price. You and your knights are entitled to peace. I will not join an offensive regiment when my vows are made.”

“This is about you then,” he said definitively, they were alone at the table by then.

“Yes, I will carry that badge, you needn’t worry about the fallout.”

“Once you enter into this life, it will not leave you.”

_Caution._

“I know. It chose me, I will not keep quiet while being sent off to save the world any longer.”

_Resolution._

His expression softened considerably, “You haven’t had any wine tonight, my love.”

_Moderation._

“I haven’t needed it,” the sudden realisation slipping away as she regained consciousness.

\---

When Venice woke up again, she felt as physically exhausted as if she had duelled the Flame General. She reflected on the words she had used. While they were true opinions in her core, she would never have said them outloud, certainly not in a public setting. Though he looked the part of a brute, Raubahn had just as many feelings and regrets as any other man. There had been a time when she really admired him, when Eorzea still felt like a strange place and loyalty was hard to come by.

But he had let her down, too absorbed by his love for the sultana, thinking himself the hero everyone lauded him for being, wealth and power going straight to his head. She had seen enough of Ishgard to know that it did not have to be so, men could choose to believe one way or another and Raubahn’s choices had nearly destroyed him, Ul’dah, and the rest of Eorzea. Pride before the fall.

Why had she let the wound fester? Her anger should have been directed at Ilberd if anything. The damn banquet and all that led to it, the fallout afterwards leading to more war, the irreplaceable losses, the second guessing of why she had been chosen by the Mother Crystal. The cycle continued, on and on, men with egos the size of planets dooming others to eternal suffering while the immortal Ascians cackled in the shadows. 

_And still we fought, and still we fought._

The day had come to don her armour, the colours of House Fortemps. It took awhile to buckle each piece appropriately, sometimes getting an armguard or a kneeguard swapped around, the under tunic and leggings catching on the chain rings, a cacophony of metal and scratched leather. Suddenly she understood the need for squires, how was a knight to run impulsively toward their foe if they weren’t already geared up from head to toe?

She emerged from the bedroom, clanking and already chafing, searching for the helmet and sword that she wouldn’t use for any other reason, lamenting that her Sword of the Round would not see any action for awhile. Venice had to wear the same uniform as everyone else, learn to do as they did without any favouritism. Not one of the Grand Company’s warmongering adventurers but a proper House Fortemps knight. Someday, a Temple Knight if she was successful enough, the very thought bolstered her resolve.

“Good morning, _Ser_ Venice,” Cyr chided her, proffering a cup of coffee to her mitted hands. She couldn’t even loop her fingers through the petite handle, having to cup the base of the nectar-filled vessel betwixt her bulky gauntlets.

“Thanks, going to need a lot of this in the coming days,” she said, savouring the black liquid.

“I didn’t include cream since we’re out but I suppose it is more authentic without,” his chipper demeanour shifted to moderate concern, “Are you alright, didn’t sleep well?”

“Had some weird dreams, burrowed grievances I thought I had moved past already.”

“Weird dreams usually indicate stress.”

“I’ve nothing to be stressed over,” she thought about it for a second longer, “But Aymeric has plenty, maybe I’m worrying about reducing his hardships.”

“Is that why you’re off to the garrison?”

“Partially. In truth, I’ve wanted to do this for awhile. I just needed the right kick to get going,” she thought of her fellow dragoons continuing their own training, one did not achieve perfection in their lifetime, nor could they wait for it be handed to them. “Plus the endeavour ticks off a few boxes: Artoirel’s new proposals for non-believers serving the Holy See need a success story to prove their merit, Emmanellain could do with using my name to snare new recruits, and I’m sure there are others that will take an interest in my progress or imminent failure, either or.”

“However shall I cope with a quiet, clean home in your absence..”

“You’ll be kept busy with trying to unravel the interpretations lurking in that holy book,” she reminded him.

The loud bang against the door startled the pair, Venice giving Cyr a look that told him to keep the book’s existence to himself. Neither was anticipating an Elezen in heavy armour, the second commander of the Temple Knights, so far from his post.

”Can I, er, help you?” Cyr asked nervously, barely opening the door.

“Relax, Master Cyr is it? I’ve not come for you but to speak to Venice.”

“Is something wrong?” Venice asked with panic, hurriedly pushing Cyr aside. A plethora of horrible scenes flashed through her mind, she had been waiting for days for the next letter. Could something so devastating happen without her being told via linkpearl?

“You should relax as well,” Ser Handeloup laughed softly, Venice reached for the pain in her chest, blissfully relieved. The sunlight bounced off her chainlinks, he bowed politely to address her proper, ”Ser Venice de Fortemps, it is an honour.”

“Ser Handeloup,” the green recruit saluted back, in the fanciful Ishgard fashion which was quite unlike the abrupt Flames one she knew well. Without her helmet, the smile couldn’t be hidden, “It feels right, almost,” she mused, awkwardly shuffling away as Cyr beckoned him inside.

“Better come in before the wind picks up. The kettle is on, tea or coffee?” Cyr ushered them both towards the cramped lounge room, relatively dubious about having a man of authority under his roof. It wouldn’t do for his clients to see him treating with law enforcement, even if they were beyond Ishgard’s strict jurisdiction, nor did he particularly fancy avoiding the eggshells that might give the man a reason to arrest him.

“Tea if you’d be so kind, no sugar or milk while I’m on duty,” Handeloup grinned, his mood upbeat and full of vigour. Before taking a spot on the lounge, he fished out a bag and handed it to Venice, “And these are for you, my lady.”

“Oh?”

“Leftover gingerbreads that my daughter made for the festival. She followed the recipe to the letter but there weren’t enough open minded sorts that wanted to try the foreign treat. We’ve been giving excess batches away for days now,” he explained, Venice didn’t hesitate to plop one in her mouth, savouring the spiciness. “She wanted to personally thank you for the bunch of Hingan confectionaries you brought back recently.”

“I did buy a fair lot, didn’t I? I’m glad someone appreciated them,” she smiled, waiting for Cyr to pour their respective drinks. “Why have you come to Idyllshire, surely not just to pay me compliments.”

“Couple of reasons,” he took the offered tea carefully in his gauntlets, Venice noting how he balanced the porcelain, “The official one being that Ser Lucia has sent me to request more machine parts from the goblins. She’s been designing and operating various drills and scenarios meant to teach our men how to fight against magitek monstrosities. While the grocery list, if it can be deemed as such, is fulfilled, I am also to ask the leadership of this fair city to accompany us in war game maneuvers. The other Alliance members have not taken Idyllshire very seriously. We would strengthen the bonds with _all_ our neighbours.”

“Smart, if everyone is your friend then you have few enemies,” Cyr deduced. Venice rolled her eyes, he knew it irritated her to have things spelled out so clearly. Mentally she took it a step further: rather than harbouring a common enemy, Ishgard needed to demonstrate solidarity with its allies. The attitude bespoke of a people intent on peace. If war came, they would be ready for that outcome as well.

“Something like that. I just go where I am told and organise the logistics around the grandiose ideas that our illustrious lord commander drafts up,” Handeloup took a sip of tea then relaxed as much as one could in full plate. Venice was anxious to ask more about that topic but didn’t want to seem obsessive.

“How fares the Inquisition, have they managed to upend the delicate social balance or are they actually being useful?” Cyr enquired dryly, taking some personal pleasure in watching his former employer choke on their just desserts.

“They’ve been surprisingly cooperative. That said, new problems have erupted since their overzealous agents have been unleashed, creating an atmosphere of paranoia throughout all levels of the city. The House of Commons bemoaned their initial focus on the Brume despite Venice’s timely tip off, the highborn are not thrilled about being accused of any wrongdoing, and there are a myriad of assumptions about all the converts that the recent festival season has produced. Nobody knows who to trust right now.”

“Sounds about right, they prefer an element of fear in their work. Easier to smell out the heresy, so to speak,” Cyr coughed slightly, setting the drink down.

 “But what does it all mean for Aymeric?” Venice couldn’t help but asking.

 “On that front, things are looking optimistic. You needn’t work yourself up, he is safest while in the city,” Handeloup could read her unspoken questions.

 “Sure, the one place where multiple assassination attempts have been made,” she bit out, unexpectedly. Cyr gave her a comforting glance, Handeloup fixated on his cup to disguise his disappointment.

 “It is no secret that the rivalry between the Inquest and the Temple Knights has reached a critical threshold, this mutual operation is a mixed blessing for all involved,” he explained as if he were reading out a dossier. “The amount of external crime has been coming down, though there are holes left to fill,” he looked at Venice knowingly. She hadn’t forgotten about the strange merchant or the other subjects in that same web, little progress had been made to connect the dots.

 “Aye, I’m joining the garrison’s contingent today,” Venice answered, waving her arms at her gear. “It is my hope that I can find any weaknesses there and put an end to them. I have no other angles to pursue at this stage. Unless you’ve uncovered anything?”

 “Nay,” he shook his head. “Your reasoning is sound, I hope your efforts are fruitless nonetheless. We are just now getting on top of these problems. Fury willing, the Inquisition will see reason as well and we can get back to covering the city as we once did in our relevant capacities.”

 “A lack of new controversies is better than nothing,” Venice sighed. “And what of the summoning site? Has it led to the culprits yet?”

 “We have some suspects under lock and key,” he nodded. “However, we are rapidly reaching capacity, everyone with a minor grievance is calling it in as heresy. I regret to say the whole exercise is starting to look like a giant hoax. Of those we have apprehended, none were confident in their leader’s ability to actually perform the ceremony.”

 “A _hoax_?” Venice was overwhelmed with anger, spilling coffee against her lap. “Fuck me. And fuck those guys for causing mischief over nothing.”

“It might not be so simple, we don’t know for sure yet,” Handeloup took the mug off her and placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “I think they wanted to use it as a threat, to blackmail us into doing whatever they wanted. But remember how I suspected there were bigger players on the field? Then there were those Domans, hired by the Garleans. I can’t shake the feeling that there is more here, someone put these misguided fools up to this plan. Same as the smuggler operation.”

“Do you have any guesses?” Cyr asked in a hushed voice, Handeloup looked to Venice who gave him an affirmative nod.

“Nay, just hunches. A spy, maybe.”

“For whom?”

“That’s the big question, isn’t it.”

Venice was no longer listening to the bigger picture as it unfolded before her companions’ eyes. The implications of the summoning plot were too perplexing, too subliminal in their effect. She had seen many different kinds of primals and methods to call them forth but none were more subversive as men using them as means to control. Varis, Thordan, Ilberd, Zenos. Ysayle, blessed Ysayle.

People could not live in a state of perpetual fear, it prevented progress, prevented the strong from protecting the weak. She had seen the hope fade from his eyes, as her own heart had stopped. He could not handle more pressure nor should he have to. Everyone had their tragic stories, their wishful whims that life had turned out out differently for the one they all looked to for life. But he was not the Fury whom deserved their prayers, he was not their redeemer.

The fundament of Ishgard’s future born on his back alone, turning him to stone, stealing his very aether, haunting and taunting him day in and day out. The pillars of change grew from worn out flesh, supple and smooth on the outside by gravely wrinkled on the inside. What would any of them to without his servitude? Their failures were his. Lower he sank into the abyss, shrouded from the reach of her light.

She cried out not even knowing whence the primordial noise came, spilling forth like an inundated dam, her fingers tingling as the blood pumped through at lightning speeds. The midlander and Elezen stopped their own discussion, staring at her as if she’d sprouted wings and horns, dilated eyes horrified by her animalistic growl.

“A fucking hoax my arse!” she shouted at the top of her lungs, on her feet, anger clouding everything. “He starves so that you might eat, he loses sleep so you can rest, he staggers every moment so you can remain steady. Is it really so much to ask for Ishgard to pick _itself_ up from the rubble?”

Aymeric had not reached his tipping point, but Venice had.

“We are trying Venice! It takes time, some wounds-”

“ _Spare me_. No one suffers more than Aymeric. What’s worse is that you can see it!”

“Venice, calm yourself. Yelling won’t fix anything,” Cyr got up, to her surprise he hugged her against his smaller body.

“I do worry that he has lost the will to hide his aches,” Handeloup said quietly. “He’s pushed all the rest of us out. He’ll do the same to you if you’re not ready.”

“What is it that ails him the most?”

“That I do not know, I’m sure it's a combination of problems, an aggregation of the multiple avenues of responsibility he has chosen to pursue..”

“They aren’t choices if there are no alternatives to pick from,” Venice slammed his implications.

She did not think of him as a free man, a powerful one but not one that could so much as sneeze without asking for permission, politely granting another’s right to scratch their nose first, building a placard outlining the merits of good health so that no one else would not fall victim to the uncomfortable sensation. _God damn it_ , she wanted to keep screaming. Her love gave himself up every day and she was not immune to watching his despair like a preventable, cautionary tale that happened to some other unlucky sod beyond her ability to alleviate.

“Ser Venice,” Handeloup had moved, he was holding her hand in his, down on one knee, imploring her for succor, “As the second commander of Her Knights Most Heavenly, I beseech you! You wish to be a Temple Knight, so here is your first call of duty: save our lord commander, by any means necessary, prove you are worthy of the faithful by rescuing our endearing legacy. We can not leave him behind in the shadows thrown from our own mistakes. He will fight back, he will push with all his might but you must stand your ground. Your arm shall not falter, your shield must not break. “

“Do you always ask the impossible of your recruits?” she sounded winded, the request was as desperate as Aymeric’s had been to send the Scions after his father.

“Only the ones that show the most potential.”

“What if..he doesn’t want to be saved?”

The thought had occurred to her more times than she could count, ashamed as she was to admit it. One had to choose life willingly, even in their darkest hour. She knew it from experience, as had Estinien who was imparting the same knowledge to his charge. Those who had confronted their inner demons to learn that their were their own enemy, they had a moral obligation to prevent others from falling. At the same time, they were not the embodiment of tyranny, no matter if others would refer to them as hope incarnate, life and death were equal options. 

“A man who loves the Fury that much is not a nihilist,” Cyr said patiently, absorbing the doubt crippling his friend. She nodded and thanked him for it, she could not lose her nerve and conduct the task. _Hope incarnate_.

“If you had to guess the source, the root cause of his frustrations, what would it be?” she asked Handeloup, dreading his response. He knew Aymeric better than she did, any insight he could lend would provide her an avenue to pursue.

He paused to consider, then had her answer in one word, ”Thordan.”

“I’ve suspected that,” she bowed her head, trying to keep the anger at bay.

“No matter what progress Ser Aymeric makes, the people will always see him as an usurper, a man who condoned patricide. Regardless of their estranged relationship, the archbishop was the only family he had. He feels personally responsible for not finding a better way to talk him away from his dark path. No one could have done it.

The man controls his every action from beyond the grave, haunting every choice that he makes. Though he lives for Ishgard, his blasphemous father once did as well, the comparisons are inescapable.”

“Without Ishgard he is nothing.” His words, not hers.

“I think, ultimately, he is afraid of who he is, what he might be capable of, what example is he setting?” Handeloup shrugged, it wasn’t his place to figure it out.

Venice had thought when confronted by one’s own self as an enemy that the only solution was to face it alone, she had been looking to catch him when the deed was done but a new idea had came to her. Thordan was her enemy too. They had to fight the shade in solidarity, to allow the healing process to begin. It was not merely mourning his father which he had ignored but also Haurchefant and perhaps, more surreal, his old self, amongst many others.

He could not possibly be the same person before and after the war. The fear of letting go had stopped him in his tracks but there had to be a way to make him move again. She would find the path, lead him to it, the hand-in-hand take every painful step along its course towards the light, for the abyss was not as infinite as he believed.

But before she could do all that, she needed to be a proper knight, like those who swore to serve alongside him, like the pretenders who gave up their own souls to defend the archbishop’s haughty ambitions. Venice Lysander had to become the true Heaven’s Ward unto herself, a champion of the Fury, ardent guard for the man who was Ishgard’s most reluctant sovereign. She had to become the very shield in her king’s hand.

\---

“Ah brother, how comfortable you are starting to look behind that desk, as if it has always been yours,” Venice beamed, the office was as lively as ever, the other knights paid her little mind as they went about their drills.

“Venice! I was not expecting to see you,” Emmanellain rose to embrace her, she dismissed his outstretched hand and gave him a burly bear-sized hug instead. “What brings you to the garrison on this lovely, er, stormy day?”

“Is checking up on my younger brother not sufficient enough reason?”

“If only life could be so simple. I suspect you bring news of some kind.”

“I’m following up on some leads of information, actually. Is there somewhere a little quieter where we could speak freely?”

“Not a social visit after all, alas,” he sighed. “The Intercessory may suit our needs..”

“Too many memories,” her voice lowered.

“Aye,” he looked apologetic for suggesting it. “Mayhaps you can accompany me on a stroll then? I wanted to make sure the ramparts were being cleared, a fruitless exercise with snow this plentiful but necessary all the same.”

She agreed, they threw on some thick wolf-pelt cloaks and made to bravely confront the icy winds.

“We’re still trying to determine how that one Lalafell merchant fits into the larger picture,” she began when they were out of earshot of any eavesdroppers. “At first, he was deemed an innocent victim but it seems now he might have been the one funding the smuggling operation, funnelling information on the side. The smugglers themselves were a group of no consequence, picking up scraps from the bigger players.”

“What of the dragon blood plot?”

“Part of an exchange of poachers wishing to feed the appetites of wealthy men elsewhere.”

“Truly, the motivation was pure greed? I’m still surprised there hasn’t been an insurgence of cultist activity, plenty of feral relics from the Horde attacking without provocation but no men holding their chains.”

“As far as I’ve been able to uncover, that is the simple nature of it all. I would like to know more about the merchant’s clientele and suppliers, surely there are are many outsiders that pass through Dragonhead every day.”

“So there are, especially now that we are aligned with the Grand Companies, not everything that comes through is civilian in nature, which relates to something I’ve been meaning to ask you about..”

“Hold that thought for a moment, brother. I wonder if we’re still dealing with leftovers threads from the Ivy plot, there were smugglers shuffling crystals back then, remember?”

“It’s possible, could be a splinter group operating in isolation. Or at least I hope so. If we’re repeating the same mistakes..” he trailed off, they stopped to look out at the frozen landscape. She noticed how much he had changed since she first met him, there was still the innocent, boyish charm but he was taking up his role with newfound seriousness. “Do you know how much that incident hangs over Ser Aymeric? He still thinks himself personally responsible for starting the war, I will not have my men let him down like that again.”

\---

The crystals, the Eyes, Ilberd’s unquenchable madness. Nobody could have predicted the unusual circumstances that had led to Shinryu’s summoning. A night that felt like the dawning of a second Calamity. Another needless sacrifice to delay another reckoning. When she had returned to the Lotus Stand, the other leaders were shocked at the sight, having lived through Carteneau like a reoccuring nightmare that stole their sleep. If only Ishgard had been at their side, all would have been well.

While he had not been there during that haunted hour, his pale complexion and slumped demeanor had echoed her own thoughts: had they ended the Dragonsong War only to have all their efforts undone by the next Calamity. Had everything they been through been a waste of time, the sacrifices made in vain? She wanted to snap him out of the tupor, to grab his hand and look him straight in the eye, to shout “I won’t let it happen, believe in me.”

All of them had been holding their breaths, waiting to see what the next day would bring. The next day came and with it the drumbeats of war, not the same world shattering event as was dreaded but perhaps a slower death howl as they waited for Garlean retribution to undo their progress all over again.

Of course he blamed himself, he was always taking the blame for faults that were not his. Somebody had to atone for the mistakes of the past. He bore so much weight, she would not see him carry any more.

\---

“At the same time, we can not endlessly scrutinize every foreigner like the old days, trade must flow unhindered. We are not the Inquisition seeking shadows that might not be there.”

Venice considered her words carefully, “The Inquisition may be behind some of these problems, or potentially involved through a lack of due diligence. Someone with a lot of power is manipulating multiple forces here, there is no other explanation. They would love to see a halt to the sharing of trade and new ideas.”

“Perhaps that is why there have been so many thorough inspections as of late.”

“There is one other thing, this must stay between us. Aymeric suspects, and I agree with him, that there may be a spy on the inside of the Temple Knights. For who or what purpose, we do not yet know. There are too many cases of secrecy being breached, knowledge spreading where it should not.”

“Is that your real angle here? To conduct a covert investigation on the troops? Why would a spy bother with the garrison, all the important decisions are made in the city.”

“Mayhaps they see it as an entrypoint, pretend to be some orphan or another, keep their head down, rise in the ranks, get transferred to guard duty or the like… it could happen.”

“Seems overly complex if you ask me. Surely Ser Lucia would know more about such machinations.”

“She is under heavy suspicion right now. And she is not aware of this, alterior investigation that I have been tasked with. I only mention it to you so that you may understand my purpose in mixing among your knights. And because I trust you.

You’re right about Aymeric, he does blame himself for many shortcomings that are caused by others. I want to help, to protect him, to ease some of the weight that he is under. If I can do that without even being in Ishgard, so much the better,” her voice rose slightly as she scanned the scenery, looking in the direction of Providence Point. Quietly, she put the emotion aside and got back to business.

“So getting back to that merchant’s link in the chain, let us start with what we know. He was murdered prior to the explosion by a hired blade, the masters of whom were Garlean. At this stage I know not what legatus or particular unit wanted the merchant dead. The explosion itself was an accident, not a cover-up. There was the smell of gunpowder, probably lit during the struggle.”

“The ingredients for gunpowder have other uses.”

“Aye, that is still an open thread for now. We know the merchant came from Ul’dah and always paid his debts in a timely manner. We know that he had a ledger containing the sale of the dragon’s blood and other similar exotic goods; his ledger was found in a hideout of more smugglers which I chanced upon in La Noscea, presumably ready to begin where the last group left off.”

“Mayhaps his ties come from Ul’dah then? If he is related to the Ivy in any way, that would make sense. Also, I’ve been wanting to test the integrity of our arms’ shipments to the Immortal Flames, our supply lines do not run directly to them, rather we rely on the Twin Adders as an intermediary. If someone was stealing shipments, we’d never find out about it. Our next batch includes highly valuable adamantite steel and I’d rather not see it fall into the wrong hands.”

“This is far-fetched conjecture, the Ul’dah thread. Where are you going with this?”

“It is a seedy city full of those who wish to take advantage of others for personal gain, any criminal worth their salt would go there to make a name for themselves. Whether it is a source or a passing through point, does it not make sense to turn our focus there? It is the only thing we haven’t yet accounted for with this strange peddler of dangerous products.”

Venice was completely surprised by Emmanellain’s reasoning, he had to have been thinking about the possibilities for quite some time. Her attention had been solely on Ishgard, on the idea of the Inquisition trying to capitalise on unfavourable changes. But there was an entire world beyond that wanted to get its slice of the cake too.

“Alright, then I’ll make for Ul’dah and see what more can be discovered.”

“You very well could do that. Or..” he gave her a mysterious look, intrigued and bursting with know-how, “You might accompany me on another jaunt, in the guise of our House colours to ensure that the shipment reaches its destination without incident. Not only will you reach the city of disgusting delights, but you’ll have helped me make sure that our caravans are secure, doing a favour to the Alliance and to Ser Aymeric, who we all know you are keen to impress.”

“That’s..a great idea, I admit. And who says I need to impress him any longer, maybe we are already past that stage.”

“Save the juicy gossip for the road, I will be most eager to hear of what you and the good knight have been getting up to. It is a knight’s duty to serve the weak, it is a brother’s duty to protect his sister’s interests.”

She was not looking forward to the inevitable teasing but part of her did want to gush about the budding romantic affair. If she didn’t tell him, he’d find out by other, less reputable means. After the escort, assuming it didn’t proved a waste of time, she could continue to masquerade as a knight, watching out for any that might try to undermine the prestige of those who legitimately wore the armour.

Maybe in time she might be seen as the real deal and mount her campaign to have the right bestowed upon. She longed for nothing more than to wear the blue and gold herself.

\---

Venice thought she knew what hard work looked like, but she was wrong, profoundly so. Getting in and out of her uniform was the least arduous of her daily ordeals, nothing could have prepared her for the rude awakening of a soldier’s life. The structure, the chores, the unannounced drills, the waiting in between everything else. She finally imagined a fraction of the tasks that beset her Ishgardian friends, for all were warriors at one time or another.

Even the choreographed tasks like parade formations caused her to question if she was made of stern enough stuff to serve. She already understood the importance of coordination and trust, perhaps better than most of the recruits, having been a frontline White Mage during the thrust into Ala Mhigo’s salt-choked heart. But then she had fought with individuals she knew well, in a small scale setting where she could focus on one brave Paladin or the singular knight equivalent.

There was more to learn when more bodies were in the mix, with multiple weapons thrown close together. Knowing how to create a flanking maneuver, trusting the one giving the orders, pushing when instinct said to fallback, recognising who had priority for cover, determining who should be left behind. All the while, one had to protect themself and override the sensations that assaulted them along with the enemy’s weaponry. The smell of blood and bile, the most difficult to ignore.

They practiced against the feral beasts that called Coerthas home as well as against each other. Her body could barely take the constant onslaught, too accustomed to fighting from a safe distance without her feet on the ground for long periods. Her ballerina pirouettes as a mage were useless when paired against a wall of thorny scales and far-reaching talons of imminent death, flames spewing the safe spots, forcing her to move out of her desirable position. Never safe until the opponent was dead.

Another complication arrived from afar, magitek missiles scorching grooves into the earth, showers of blinding snow blanketing the wounded, preventing an effective line of attack. By the time the exercise was over, her ears were ringing from the metallic echos of her dutiful helmet, held at last under arm in its dented, blackened glory; barely recognisable in its current shape, barely usable for the next foray into Lucia’s harrowing gauntlet of Garlean ingenuity and mayhem.

The other recruits scattered from their lines, another gruelling week concluded. Most returned to the city or wherever their families lived, the rest puttered off to the barracks to sleep off the short weekend. Ser Lucia waited around for any last minute reports or details, what she referred to as her customary window for “lighthearted sparring”, an opportunity for all to test their mettle.

To the victor went boons such as a reduction in mundane duties or extended downtime. There were never any victors. No one had ever bested her and anyone who tried became bait for the punters, left with naught but empty purses and bruised pride. Many of the unlucky were left to scramble back their fortunes from more shadowy sources away from the garrison’s tight regulations.

“She looks disappointed, might take it out on me,” Emmanellain grimaced, pulling lazily at his sword.

“That wouldn’t be a new development,” Honoroit offered.

“But imagine if I were victorious, the men would revel in my success, they’d listen to me at the meetings of strategy rather than tolerate my presence,” the young man dreamed aloud. “I am hopeless at this endeavour, who am I kidding?”

“Maybe you should practice with someone closer to your skill level,” Venice shrugged casually.

“Oh would you?” he brightened at the idea.

“Venice is not cut out to teach anyone at the art of the sword, you would be better served in failing against a master than in succeeding against another apprentice,” Ser Lucia said patiently, joining their small gathering.

“It doesn’t look like there are any contenders today, my lady,” Honoroit said apologetically, breaking the ensuing awkwardness. Emmanellain fidgeted nervously, Venice was distracted by the sight of an airship moving towards the Shroud, likely an Ixali vessel launched from Natalan.

“We should go back to practicing,” Lucia said to Emmanellain.

“Must we? I could learn while watching you fight another.”

“Come then, Venice. Let us dance as the emperors do to solidify their claim to dominate,” she challenged her compatriot, leaving no room for her to back out.

“If she doesn’t kill me, I’m going to kill _you_ ,” Venice swore to her placid brother.

“You’ll be fine! Fury bless your blade,” he said, shying away from the pair of intimidating women with earnest.

“Worth noting that Ser Lucia’s idea of a playful spar is what most of us might consider a corporeal beating,” Honoroit advised as he hastily chased after Emmanellain.

“Fucking fantastic,” Venice declared to the heavens, hoping her other brother would not witness the inevitable humiliation

Lucia bowed modestly then withdrew her brutal blade, no shield was on her person, a detail which barely stymied Venice’s eroding confidence. She would not be making use of the blocks and parries she had been growing dependant upon. Her own sword raised, their tips tapped, the duel began.

From the onset, Venice was on the back foot, struggling to gain any ground. Her opponent was every ilm a Garlean, her aggression fell some where between Gaius and Zenos without the magitek trickery or strange enhancements. Just a stalwart longsword, instinctual reactions, and a stiff upper lip.

It was all she could do to protect her sides from heavy, penetrative blows, not the least bit sure that the sharpened blade would stop in time to not cut the links of tear-like steel or worse. There was no time to appreciate the way the light bounced off Lucia’s blade as it punctuated the clouds, a spotlight on the meager tournament so none left at the garrison could ignore them.

An upper cut, a twist of the heel, a backhanded block hesitantly thrown over the shoulder with both hands on the grip. A swipe at the exposed left, a kick to the stomach to create breathing room. Lucia’s grunt of approval as she regained her momentum, charging back at full pelt. Red-hot sparks flying between clashes, wisps of smoke left as the blades went from black to orange to ivory hue.

She tried to use every move she had learned or seen others perform, but Lucia had an answer for each. On the defence, she had no chance to upset her opponent’s impeccable balance which meant she stayed locked with her arms in front after most stance changes. After every faltering mistake, she could hear her beloved urging her to get back up.

It became increasingly difficult to recall his teachings over the shattering pain inflicted by his second. As they continued, Venice began to worry that something was wrong. Lucia’s skill was well-known, she had never expected to score a lasting mark, but the fire in her eyes, the shouts, the amount of forced used made her wonder if she was the source of an unspoken frustration.

Unnecessary follow-throughs began to tear at the ringlets on Venice’s arms, she saw some fall to the ground in torn heaps. She favoured blocking with her shoulders, the pauldrons granting minor relief but not sheltering her enough from the brunt of each attack. Her movements were being dictated to her, her anger began to get the better of her form. Wild, outlandish feints, anything to try and slow the the dragon of a woman intent on cutting her down.

Venice was on her back before she knew it, the hard stone ground lending no mercy to the stumble. If the Fury was kind, she might be able to grapple Lucia down with her but all she managed was to kick out one leg from under her, so that she fell to her knee with a loud clank. The blade came down so swift she hadn’t even registered that her own had been dislodged, the point hovering above her nose, green eyes seering with hatred, shoulders hunched and ready to make the final plunge.

She closed her eyes and swore an apology to the Mother Crystal that of all the primals none could outmatch the Temple Knight’s first commander.

“She yields!” a frantic voice shouted nearby, Emmanellain’s fervent plea.

“Does she?” Lucia’s asked for confirmation, staring down her immobilised prey.

Venice squinted with only one eye open, the other closed tight waiting for the end.

“I yield,” she sputtered and held her breath.

Emmanellain bent down to help Venice to her feet. After a few failed attempts, he decided on propping her up instead, for her legs were to battered by various cuts to get up without two pairs of hands. “I shouldn’t have let you go into that, will you forgive me for not stopping you?”

Lucia tossed her sword straight up in the air with enough poise that it it over-ended. She then reverse grabbed it, stashed it back neatly into its sheath without any effort and extended her other hand. Utilising the extra musculature of her swordarm, she grabbed Venice’s outstretched hand and hauled her up while Emmenallian looked on, deeply impressed by her leftover strength and also embarrassed by his inability to be of any use.

“Do you think I am not familiar with my lord’s technique?” she grinned, the violence gone from her expression, there were no hard feelings to be had.

“I haven’t been ravaged so thoroughly in, well, several moons,” the realisation dawning on Venice with unsuspecting precision, an arrow finding the bullseye, still shuddering from release.

Lucia folded her arms and smirked, “Had I wanted to play, we’d be on the ground still. Armoured though you are, I know the weak points quite well, could make you squeal with the right tugging on the rings beneath your belt. You still would have yielded, though you’d be pooled around in a sopping mess of sweat, amongst other things.”

Venice couldn’t be sure if it was the blood pumping through her friend or whether the words were true, but she found the idea to her liking. Those sinewy pureblood muscles flexing beneath the plates, a pair of bosoms bigger than her own no doubt, hidden from the view of man and woman like an acolyte in confessional, waiting to be laced with soft puckerings and kneading knuckles.

“I haven’t hurt you, have I?” her smooth voice luring her back to the present, a hand against her shoulder to prop up the spent Warrior of Light.

“Nothing that I can’t tend to with my magic,” Venice said cheerfully. She did not discourage Lucia’s touch, instead she pawed for her shoulder and tried to regain her footing, the world still swaying like a turbulent sea.

“Good, though I ought to caution you. If you cannot handle a pummeling on the field, foreplay will not be any kinder,” a grovely whisper met Venice’s ears, the moisture crystallising against prickling skin. Lucia embraced her as one does to a wounded soldier, she would have heard the pounding heart busting against the confines of her friend’s leather underarmour. Again, Venice was not sure if it was the after battle lusting quieting down or a premonition to another arousing round. “Perhaps we should cool off with a drink or two, you’ve earned that much.”

“Why stop at one or two?” she laughed nervously, following after the taller woman to the mess hall. A thought niggled at the back of her, something she was neglecting to do, but she couldn’t hold onto it with any clarity. She promptly dismissed it in favour of spending some quality alone time with a powerful shebear.

The chef was already gone for the day, leaving Venice to improvise with the scraps in the cupboards. She brought forth two plates heaped with shredded pork sandwiches, the meat pressed between two golden, flaky kaiser buns, crowned with slabs of goat’s cheese, drizzled in a punchy horseradish condiment of Ishgardian taste that she wasn’t overly fond of. A keg was on the lonely table, recently tapped, two mugs drowned in its amber juices.

How the keg had ended up in its current location, she attributed to Lucia’s mighty reserves, her gauntlets had been cast aside so she could guzzle the first drink unimpeded. Venice bit her lip, the other woman’s throat rippled with each slurp, she pushed the will to mark her skin with her lips aside, the double grumblings of their stomachs agreeing wholeheartedly with the decision.

The hearty meal nestled against their insides, leaving Venice to be grateful for many things. They mused about the things they missed about home for a bit before she worked up the courage to address the brutality of the spar. The keg was a quarter-drained as she meandered to her point, the flowing lack of inhibitions causing the protrusion of reflection and contemplation.

\----

“Though we come from the same place, our origins are quite different. The Empire honed you into a living weapon, you had a place at the table within the higher ranks. My family was on the bottom rung, through not fault of their own. Well, in hindsight, that might not be entirely true, but regardless we were pretty far down the pecking order.

Here in Ishgard we remain the opposite, now I have been bestowed with wealth and privilege, neither of which I asked for but I feel somewhat obligated to uphold in memory of my fallen brother. Don’t get me wrong, I love my new family but this isn’t the life I sought to have.

You continue to find stability within servitude though now it is of your own volition rather than forced upon you. I would have thought you’d prefer personal freedom after enduring the life you had, I cannot imagine the extent of your suffering under your former Garlean masters.

I chose to leave before I would be entrapped the same way, had I been smarter I would have stayed longer to at least learn how to fight and fend for myself. Smart choices have never been one of my hallmarks.”

“All Garleans are tools for somebody else’s game, the hierarchy in Ishgard was not unfamiliar to me. It was all I knew. I took comfort in it and somewhere along the way I began to believe in something greater.”

“He’s intoxicating, isn’t he? Loved by all, we would gladly follow him to the Seventh Gate and beyond. You’ve long since paid off your debt, Lucia, but I can see why you’ve chosen to remain here.

Can I ask an awkward question? Does our closeness in recent weeks bother you in some fashion? You’ve grown distant from both of us and I know you have your own, perfectly logical reasons for that..”

“I’m not jealous, if that is what you mean to imply. I have a job to do, as does he. There’s a lot to keep track of right now. The fewer distractions, the better.” Lucia appeared flustered, not by Venice’s inquisitiveness nature but by her pressing need to have a discussion with a knight who could fathom of nothing save her neglected duty. Venice had the other woman where she wanted her and she would not let go.

“Fair. I just don’t want to hurt anyone. You’re a dear friend though I suspect you’re not entirely happy with me right now.  Is there any way I can rectify this? What of Artoirel, I could speak on your behalf.”

“Please don't, Venice,” her voice was begging, her eyes showed a conflicting story. “I can fight my own battles. His mind’s already made up which is just as well, we weren’t going to get very far with the gulf between our respective statuses.”

Venice put out a hand to Lucia’s knee, the knight flinched but did not dissuade her. Again, she wanted to ask how Lucia felt, did she even want things to work out? “You’re a knight in good standing, the bloody first commander. Why should you not be allowed to love whomever you wish?”

“To some, I will always be an outsider. You will find yourself dealing with that same unbudging wall of ignorance if you continue on as you are. Ishgard is awake, but she is still pushing the sleep away from her eyes, still learning how to stand without fumbling over again. The steps are fresh, some are still raw and bleeding. This isn’t Garlemald, these people have compassion within them and their hearts will not mend simply because we tell them to.”

“I know, I’m trying to be patient with it all. I also realise how important your work is to you, and to Aymeric. But there is so much more to life, you can’t bear everyone’s burdens without taking care of your own. If you fancy someone, you should tell them so, there is no harm in that.”

“Do you heed your own advice?” Lucia looked bored, maybe annoyed that Venice was being so pushy about matters that were not her concern.

“I…” Venice clammed up pretty hard, looking away from those peridot eyes.

“When the Inquisition legislation reaches its conclusion, I might give your brother another chance but not before then. I would only get in the way and hinder what he seeks to accomplish, as you are doing for my lord.”

“I am doing the opposite!” Venice protested loudly.  “Perhaps it is the Inquisition interfering, not I.”

“You refer to the renewed scrutiny over my loyalty. I’ve been through this dance before, Venice. It may upset you but I know where I stand, my actions will speak louder than any words you can devise.”

“Doesn’t the unwarranted prejudice make you angry?”

“I’m no heretic, there is nothing to fear.”

“Lucia, why are you so hellbent on resisting my help? This slander cannot be tolerated, not just against you or me, but for all who would follow in our footsteps. We found somewhere to belong here, other outsiders whether Garlean or otherwise might wish to do the same. If they bring you low, you will be used as warning to the rest. Surely the Inquisition desires more power, to show themselves to be relevant in this new order.”

“It is none of my business, nor the Temple Knights’. We have our duties and they have theirs. At one point in time we were on the same side. This fascination with removing all vestiges of the old ways will set us on a dangerous path. We should not be replacing the pillars of Ishgardian society but repairing the loose stones.”

She held the same opinion as Aymeric on the matter: the Inquisition should be remodelled instead of vanquished. Venice tried to discern if Artoirel could see past a singular opinion or if that had been indeed the crux of the problem between them.

“I don’t disagree. There are are no other likely candidates that would gain much from muddying your name,” Venice relented. She wondered if it was at all possible to avoid the political minefield in the Holy See, at some point she would need to learn how to navigate it as her peers did.

“I can handle this, Venice.”

“You shouldn’t have to. I saw how hard you fought during the siege, on the Steps of Faith multiple times. You’re as loyal as they come, like Ishgard’s version of Lady Agrias, you have all the same virtues: steadfast conviction, honour, a level head during times of upheaval, your faith in the divine. You saved Aymeric for Fury’s sake, and not just because you had to even the scales.

You’re an inspirational woman and I am proud to be your friend. Please don’t forget that.”

“Hm, I always equated myself to Princess Ovelia in those stories, the supportive wife of Delita, always there to pull him through his quest to unite the land. But I take your point. I’m not exactly a people person. I do my job and that’s it. It has become more difficult as of late while others have not been so dedicated or at least too busy looking after personal charges rather than the city as a whole.”

“You’re about as hard to get through to as Estinien. I daresay a lot of Ishgard’s personality has melded with your own. Should you ever want to talk, about _anything_ , I will make myself available. That’s what friends do for each other,” Venice was exasperated but not withholding of her warmth, she knew the pattern like a marching tune that would come out of its own accord. _One carefully placed stone at a time_. “When things calm down, I’d like to make more effort to spend time with you doing...whatever it is you do to relax.”

Lucia was about to leave by then, grabbing for the gauntlets and pauldrons which she had taken off during their lengthy chat. Mischievously, she grinned, “Miniatures.”

“Come again?”

“I carve and paint miniatures as a hobby, it started out as modifying chess pieces and grew from there.”

“The pieces on the war table.. are yours?” Venice was bemused, naturally artists gravitated towards each other.

The lady knight nodded, a hint of pride sneaking into her expression.

“Awesome, we’ll do that one day, I look forward to it!” she got up and hugged Lucia, planting a friendly kiss on her as a promise. The anger was gone but neither was she ready to be swept up in Venice’s enthusiasm. Ever looking for the silver lining, Venice chocked up the lack of a punch to the guts as a favourable outcome.

\---

Venice thought she was growing weary of contemplation but there was plenty of time on the journey south to do just that. Accustomed to Aetheryte travel, she found the slow slog from Central Coerthas to the North Shroud monotonous and trying of her thin patience.  Emmanellain wasn't overly thankful for the long period of silence either, spending much of it cracking through the layers of secrets Venice held close, bits of herself she hadn’t felt comfortable sharing while tending to the needs of others.

They had left Dragonhead with optimism, both looking forward to something different from the ordinary routines. Her brother put every onze of effort into the escort plan, moreso than was necessary. To him, they were going on a grand adventure fraught with peril and untold dangers, Venice barely had the heart to tell him they would find no trouble along well-worn paths. But she was hoping for some of the anticipated excitement to make itself known any minute.

It was the first time for a lot of things in her brother's life: his first journey away from home, the first time he was properly in command of a mission,  the first time he did not have Honoroit fretting all over him. Their parting had been dramatically bittersweet, she often wondered about the true nature of their comradeship. He did not have a mother, he had a nurturing squire instead, one who was about four times as intelligent and thorough about performing his duties, often taking up Emmanellain's as well, leaving the garrison commander to scratch his head perplexed without  his manservant at his side. He had chosen to go it alone, to spend time enhancing the bonds of sibling love, but also to learn how to fend for himself as all men should.

The shrubbery of the bountiful forest rolled past on the sides of their moderately-sized covered wagon, drawn by two posturing black chocobos who did not enjoy manual labour for a second, constantly having to be prodded back into their lines. Yellow bos would have been better but the black ones were coming of age and needed to broken in sooner rather than later. Rebellious and full of themselves, unlike the obedient carriage bos that had transported a similarly spirited Venice at the start of her own venture into the unknown.

More colours and textures than Venice could count, Emmanellain asking for botanical information she had long forgotten. Various types of woods, flowers that grew on everything, pliable materials sought for their fashionable qualities. Cotton, flax, linen, spider silk, and ubiquitous hemp to tie everything neatly together. All were mingled amongst the greenery, waiting to be cultivated and spun into sturdy fibres, for market and industrial use.  There were no open pastures or grazing livestock too far out from the watchful eye of Gridania.

She dozed off thinking of tapestries and comfy patchwork blankets, an astute analogy for the people they had left back home. They all wove their own stories with varying degrees of skill and talent, separately they were meaningful but missing something important. Ishgard itself was the loom. The colours of dye were added by each hand that took their turn, tuning the work to their individual taste. The knots of amateurs learning the loops and threads, mistakes left for all to criticise. Each had their own style, depicting an image that did not line up with any other.

Slowly the pieces were finished, brought together to show a unified kaleidoscope of techniques, their labours visualised as one people. The finished product would make for a luxurious quilt, each square the passing of another soul, beautiful and practical but not the best they could do. The work continued until together they achieved the pinnacle of harmony. Then they could start a fresh, well-thought out tapestry from the ground up, one to hang in their glittering Vault, a testament that change took many permutations but could lead to stability in the end if all threads were borne into one vision of hope, a confluence of spirit, sprung from the hands of many.

The sun was beginning to set as they crossed over to the Central Shroud, not one Ixali ambush disturbing their quiet run. A giant fragment of Dalamud blotted out much of the sky, the rest of it framed by jaw-like grey teeth, the false moon’s shadow touching the soil with splashes of mundaneness. Emmanellain’s high-pitch yawn dragged Venice out of her daydream state.

“Keep onwards to Gridania in the dark?” he asked innocently. The wind pushed his scent against her, the sweet smell of boyhood: sticky date pudding, vanilla-infused cream, the dusty crunch of fallen maple leaves and fresh dirt smeared against one’s knees.

“I told you, we’re not going into the city,” she said calmly. That had been the source of their first heated argument, just before pausing at Fallgourd Float where they split up for an hour to give each other space, letting the chocobos refuel on chopped grains.

The sleepy, utopian village of Gridania was a lengthy nostalgia trip ready to happen. Venice had taken the view that it was a time-consuming diversion that would not mimic the detailed route Emmanellain had devised. They were supposed to test the shipment’s sense of value, no one would steal from locked crates in the city-bounds where numerous guards were on watch.

But, more to the truth, the city was home to laidback folks plying their various benign, civilian trades, farmers and merchants taking long drags on their pipes, whistling as they wandered about. Everyone laughing and chattering away like they hadn’t seen their fellow neighbours enough times in the last solar cycle, the air covered in the smell of baked pies or other dishes that took several hours to reach perfection. Nothing taken remotely serious by anyone.

The lure of kicking one’s boots off and joining in with the “no worries” lifestyle, too hard to resist once the hook was set. She was sure he’d get swept up in picking wildflowers or tearing off his armour to jump into the river for a refreshing dip, as she would have wanted to do. The Gridanians were a cheerful, often naive, bunch of dreamers, there were was no place for a pair of Ishgardians in chainmail.

“But I want to see it! A city without actual brick walls, how do they defend it? Don’t many Miqo’te live there? What about all the waterfalls, do they build around them? It must be immensely beautiful and quaint, what about..” he droned on, she feeling more and more guilty after each question.

“We can visit on the way back, if you still want to,” she compromised in her diplomatic voice, one she was becoming more acquainted with using.

“The map says there’s an old draw bridge coming up. I don’t fancy crossing it in this light,” he went all businesslike, the curiosity suppressed for the moment.

“Aye, we ought to make camp on this side and give it a proper go in the morning,” she stretched. They found a flat enough area with a view towards the road on a small ledge of upturned earth. She gathered firewood while he tended to the kindling, bribed the chocobos with gysahl greens and krakka roots, and took inventory of their weapons. Not a single one was missing; so far, so good.

Booming thunder crackled overhead, the wind picked up then settled in an irregular pattern. Flash lightning common with warm, summer storms kept the knights from closing their eyes.

“I’ll never complain about blizzards again,” Emmanellain groaned, throwing his blanket off.

“Are you scared?” Venice taunted, pulling up on her side to look at him across the meager campsite.

“Did I say that? No,” he carefully avoided her gaze.

“Maybe a spooky ghost story would be appropriate right now,” she continued.

“Venice, please. I was on the wall when we confronted Nidhogg, nothing scares me.”

“Watching me do all the work, yes, a valiant hero you are,” she thought for a moment. “What do you know of Odin?”

“That’s he some sort of primal on a horse that terrorises the pansy Wood Wailers that think themselves lancers because they use sharpened sticks?”

“Mm, true, but not the full story. The thing about Odin is, he often comes without warning during storms such as these, can show up any where. Some say you can’t look at him directly or if you do, you won’t see his head. Or his horse’s head,” she threw the last bit in just to make him squirm.

His baby blue eyes stared back at her with utter indifference. Ishgardian fearlessness was nearly as problematic as an abundance of fear, neither extreme allowing an individual to value their miraculous mortality as highly those dearest to them did.

“Is that the best you can come up with?” he sat up, pushing hair out of his eyes. “I may as well stand watch, it’s too hot to sleep.”

“Sure you can handle it? If you hear hooves stampeding in the distance..”

“I’m not a child, I thought you of all people might have treated me with more respect,” he said angrily, getting up to put his sword belt back on.

The next day came and Emmanellian remained in control of his wits. No rain had fallen throughout the night before, the road was about as smooth as muddy tracks hardening in the snippets of rays that the canopy permitted could be. Once more he tried to sidetrack their mission, begging to stop at Bentbranch Meadows to admire the race-ready chocobos.

Venice relented if only because the weather was favourable and because she couldn’t resist his big grin. The smell of hay and washed down stalls had a rustic charm, she remember the day she had been issued with the whistle for Antonius. How proud she had become in that instant, topped only when Haurchefant had given her another whistle for Octavia, boastful mother of the recent clutch at Dragonhead for which their current bos were cousins.

Afterwards, he told her all about wanting to become a rancher in some made up hamlet of his imagination, training and rearing bos for pioneers in the west, a region he had never been to but somehow could describe in great detail. He asked Venice if she’d ever take up her singing career again, to spread tales about his entrepreneurial pursuits to the masses. Though they had bypassed Gridania, he was sounding like a local Wildwood on the leaf.

They continued onwards towards the south, passing many young adventurers starting out their quests for fame and glory, as if a few ladybug kills could prepare them for their first primal encounter. For the most part, spirits remained high but on occasion they did what siblings did best: they fought over stupid differences in opinion.

Venice was attempting to educate her culturally-deaf brother in Eastern weapons, but he kept ascribing them to ones he was familiar with, referring to a nagata as a claymore and so forth. His ignorance grated on her, there was so little he understood beyond the Pillars. But there was just as much she didn’t understand about being a noblewoman.

“Father hasn’t given you the talk yet, has he?” he said quietly, as if they might be spied upon in the middle of the Twelveswood.

“What talk?” she asked apprehensively, the sunlight was fading too early in the day.

“You’d know if you’d heard it already, trust me.”

“About the birds and the bees? I already know that one,” she laughed so hard that the bos jerked their necks around to glare at her.

“This one is more.. _depressing_ ,” he pursed his lips and got a misty-eyed about him, aging significantly right before her eyes. “It is a conversation regarding the importance of legacies. I suppose it’s a necessary rite of passage that we must endure against our wills, one of many such traditions we must subjugate our own children to some day.”

“What does the dreaded dialogue entail?”

“That everyone should stick to their own kind but especially the High Houses must ensure the preservation of their pedigrees for the good of Ishgard as a whole, personal feelings sacrificed for the greater good. That’s the short and sweet version.”

Venice was not unfamiliar with how aristocracies functioned, Garlemald’s rigid order kept everyone in line. But the way Emmanellain’s voice lowered as he spoke, he clearly had not accepted the natural structure, nor had he tried outrun his fate as she had foolishly attempted to do. Had she ended up back where she started even after upending the archbishop’s death grip on the status quo? The hardwork began after the revolution ended, that’s where many went wrong.

“How did you take this information?”

“Surprisingly better than my brothers. Artoirel didn’t speak for weeks, the sheer responsibility crippling his reason. He has a cautious soul, one that wouldn’t do anything to bring ill-repute to our house. Haurchefant was angry, he ran away for a full moon. He often did that for short periods when he had a falling out with father but that time, we weren’t sure he would come back. And I, I continued to think I would be overlooked so I wasn’t subjected to the old game’s rules.”

“But is Artoirel not in position to rewrite those rules now?”

“He is, though it would be unwise to do so within our generation,” he handed her the reigns then, growing weary from the subject matter. “Social constructs don’t go away just because some hard truths are brought into the light. Quite the contrary, tradition becomes more important in the face of uncertainty. We are more likely to see foreign knights carrying our banners than lowborn and highborn intermingling as entire familial units. Children of mixed heritage like Hilda will have to carry on that particular struggle.”

“I’m all about breaking trends,” Venice grinned, wanting to displace the sobering mood. Emmanellain merely sighed, unwilling to believe in her well-meaning naivete.

The clue was in the name: lowborn or highborn. A highborn came with strings attached, but she was the operator of her own marionette. What Emmanellain saw as a stark inevitably looked like a challenge to her, already she had done the unthinkable. A lowborn could rise but they would never be anything else. Why wait for the next generation when they could snip each other’s strings.

An unannounced crack of thunder had them both leaping out of their seats, the birds squawking in fright. Before they could say anything, a sheet of rain dumped buckets of comet-sized droplets all around. More sheets, they could barely see each other’s faces in the downpour, breath coming out in plumes as the temperature dropped. Venice handed her brother his helm while shoving on her own.

The unsettling sensation of tingling aether, the unrest of the Shroud’s elementals plucking at  the umbral aspects like a viola reaching crescendo, the feeling that something dark was on the prowl. _Tension_.

“I take it back, I much prefer blizzards to this sopping rainfall,” Emmanellain’s tinny voice echoed.

“Shh,” she put out her hand, straining to make sense of the aether disruption.

While she was no Padjal, her attunement to water, earth, and wind during the course of her early Conjurer days had instilled in her a great respect for the balance of nature. The weather didn’t have to produce a hellish primal whose only purpose was to cut down any offenders who stood between him and the Font, but she had to be sure. The neighing of a nightmare steed, Sleipnir’s hooves striking the ground with as much force as Titan’s landfall, confirming the inevitable.

Immediately thereafter, Venice’s linkpearl beeped consecutively as each gloryhunter called in to ascertain the primal’s location. A stream of adventurers road past in groups or alone in the saddle of their favoured steed, rushing towards the danger despite the prevailing storms. Some were recognisable to her, she waved and they waved back, beckoning her to join the hunt. Their own path was blocked by boggy potholes, the birds reluctant to move above a snail’s pace.

“Are those your Free Company mates? We should go join them!” Emmanellain was anxious but Venice could not allow it.

“You don’t have the Echo,” she said firmly. Even with the benefit of numbers, the risk was not worthy of their blades.

From there on, they took the cumbersome back roads, sometimes creating paths of their own through the dense vegetation. The soil didn’t erode as fast amongst the tree roots but as they pushed closer to Camp Tranquil, they were inundated with rising flood water.

“Damn it all, need to find a spot to rest until this blows over,” Emmanellain declared. The camp itself was barely more than a platform, likely covered in prime fodder to tempt the shadowy elder primal.

“Aye, stick to the edges of the swamp and look for a cave of some kind,” Venice decided.

“Do we seem to be moving faster?” he asked after their fourth fruitless turn off from the water’s edge.

Venice peeked inside the wagon, two large crates were definitely gone, “Fuck, someone must be following us.” A whiff of campfire smoke caught her before the rain washed it out, along with another smaller crate which had tumbled out unhinged. “Turn the bos around, we must backtrack.”

They were in the middle of tying the loosened crate back inside when a group of three men with long swords came screaming at them. The lightning flashed over and over, shimmering off the bandits’ weapons. The blades were two-handed length, they had handles like revolvers with an exposed fuse at the base. Their armour was basic, leather favoured by poachers and sneakthiefs. Venice initially thought them to be from the Redbelly gang, given the scarves they wore. More men joined from the slippery shadows, more gunblades in their hands.

The sing of steel as Emmanellain stood beside her, her own blade drawn and held at an angle, as Lucia had shown her to do. They waited for the superior force to come to them, Venice calling the shots with silent hand gestures. Though fewer, they had the advantage of cover and sturdier equipment. The rain showers lessened marginally as the fight intensified.

The initial three were dispatched cleanly, falling into the mud in a sickening heap, dropping their weapons every which way. Emmanellain held his own without much assistance, years of watching tournaments and sword practice coming to the fore. Had he been anything other than an Ishgardian Elezen she may have worried for his safety. She did what she could to keep the odds in his favour, not above resorting to scrappy punches and kicks while her sword was piercing hearts and guts, going on the offensive while he remained low behind his shield. 

Even with a steel helmet covering a chainmail coif, his hearing was better than hers. He shouted whenever new combatants were on approach, “Archers!”

She looked for the tree line and saw nothing, his arms reached for and twisted her around in mid-air as a dovetailed bolt flew past, her chest heaving at the reminder of the penetrative pain that the shaft could induce. The sound of a heart racing, pounding fiercely against the chains, perhaps both of them. His foot caught on a gnarled root, upsetting the precarious balance, both meeting the ground on their sides as more bolts flew overhead. Without a word, he scrambled to push her smaller body under him, her shield coming around to block his exposed back, the hard thud of another arrow lodged within.

“By Halone,” he exclaimed, wrestling to stay between the shield and the ground as she craned her neck out to find their irritating opponents.

“Can those bos fight?” she asked hurriedly.

“Do dragons breathe fire?” he said coolly. She didn’t have to say more, he braced for the short run to their bridles and made good on unleashing the cavalry duo. The pent up rage both chocobos had been harbouring turned them into feral, relentless combatants. A flurry of feathers, beaks, and talons ensued as they chased down the elusive bowmen.

They engaged the handful that remained as a single unit, back-to-back with shields out. Whether the chocobos were successful in finishing off their prey mattered little, the lack of projectiles kept the field open and controllable. Venice had killed so many men in her days that it barely registered to her that her brother was a novice. But he held his temper, not glorifying in the men he dispatched which came back for round two against Venice’s precise, fatalistic strikes.

None save for the last Hyur which was attempting a two handed cleave against his shoulder, stopped only by the puncture to his throat, a fountain of crimson decorating both siblings as Emmanellain withdrew the blade, kicking the man over so that the harmless gunblade flew into the water beyond. She breathed out a sigh of relief, not one of the gunblades had fired a shot.

Emmanellain stood motionless over his bleeding victim, engrossed by the pattern of the red mixing with the the brown swamp water. The throat had been ruptured, a long gash ran up through the chin, through the bone, stopping short of the nose’s bridge, the face a garbled mess of brown and pink, skin flayed open as if it were butchered meat ready to be marinated and cooked.

Venice reached down, brushing the hair away from the forehead: a third eye lay intact. A chain in the dirt nearby glistened, Garlean dogtags. She scoured the rest of their deceased opponents, most had the same tags around their necks or hiding in pockets on their person. Tentatively, she tried to operate the trigger on one of the gunblades. Nothing happened, either the fuse was too soaked through or the weapons had been rendered inert by other means.

Again she came around to Emmanellain to ask his opinion but he hadn’t moved an ilm. Cautiously, she looked into his pale, emotionless eyes. He had the same youthful complexion as ever, thin lips and sanguine cheeks, wide ears hidden beneath his armour, his helmet held between his feet. All Elezen looked ageless to her, even Lousioux had looked jovial while facing his own demise. To read their expressions accurately took a lot of guesswork.

“Emma? Is this your first kill?” a hesitant whisper.

“Why does evil exist?” he did not turn to address her, still labouring to make sense of what he had done.

“Oh baby brother..”

“I am not a child, Venice.”

“Not any more,” she didn’t coddle him, there was no sense in doing so. “Good thing Honoroit made us bring shovels in case we got stuck. Go ahead and grab one, I’ll help to speed things along. Even if Odin is gone, it’s not safe for us to remain stationary if we don’t have to.”

Tears in his eyes, he did as he was told. Together they dragged the bodies towards the trees and dug proper graves, Venice not wanting to cut corners on account of the weather. He needed to know the effort it took to bury a body, to spend time with his consequences. It wasn’t a fun lesson, but it had to be done right. Once the holes of earth were ready to fill, she watched him beg the Fury to cleanse their souls and forgive his transgressions, guilt-wracked for taking life despite what justice demanded. 

Venice tried to explain that everyone came into and left the world roughly the same, that everything that happened in between mattered. Every single thing. How the living treated the dead could not be overstated. Even after Nidhogg’s defeat, Hraesvelgr’s brood sang their songs to despair, reflecting on their brother’s passing without judgement, their scaly breasts heavy with sorrow.

Emmanellain spoke little but she had an inkling that her words were not falling on deaf ears. It was not moral implications that transfixed him, the men had attacked first and thus marked themselves for death. Justice was clean. Confronted by the fragility of life and possessed by the elective power to take it away, that brought him a newfound appreciation for all that he did.

Once the grisly deed was concluded, Venice took the lead in tracking down their violent chocobo companions. There was no argument if one of them should stay behind to mind what crates were left, she wasn’t going to let her brother out of her sight nor did he want to be far away from mortal contact. The bos were not hard to locate, they had rampaged through the forest as if they were dastardly duo, Odin and Sleipnir, themselves, leaving a convenient trail of destruction to follow.

Long raven feathers stuck amongst the twigs, thick blood smears left against the undergrowth, the occasional gruesome body part dismembered and discarded, of no use to the pair of craven herbivores. Chunks of gouged out armour, torn gauntlets, a bowstring snapped in half, the effects leading to one ravaged victim that may have been a middle-aged male Hyur at one point in time.

The second one they chanced upon was a male Miqo’te of indiscernible age, his innards scattered amongst the ambushers’ campsite. The latter didn’t fit what they suspected, the Garleans rarely worked with the “lesser” races. Best Venice could guess, he had been a local guide who had fallen in with the shady lot, unaware of their unscrupulous origins.

The camp was made in the shadow of a hillside with rooted tree trunks camouflaging the entrance, not a wise defencive setup but decent for laying low. The small tents were designed for one or two bodies, barely of sufficient quality to keep out the elements. Around the bonfire were cans and bottles, mostly of the alcoholic variety along with jarred preservatives, stolen from the homes of the few Gridanians that insisted on living rough. No more weapons were spotted, one of the stolen crates was propped up against a makeshift barricade of sharpened oak branches, the lock not yet broken or tampered. 

“Someone is still here,” Emmanellain said quietly, eyes scanning the meager homestead. Venice was trying to lift the crate by its side without much success. The chocobos were patrolling, looking for any sugary treats amongst the wreckage, the light rain cleansing their beaks of the carnage they had partaken.

A clattering of cookware, one of the bos coaxed a young Miqo’te lad out of his tent. He had tawny hair and ears, golden eyes, ashen skin, was holding out a skillet as if were a sword and reaching for a pot kettle to throw over his head.

“Who are you, where’s Papa?” the boy of roughly 13 summers asked, clearly not shaken by the presence of strangers.

Venice and Emmanellain exchanged a look, both had a strong suspicion of who “Papa” was meant to be.

“Oh, no, _you_ tell him,” the younger sibling’s eyes went wide.

“Fuck that. I had to tell Father about Haurchefant, _you_ can tell the little fur man that your birds developed a taste for cat flesh.”

The young Elezen grimaced. There was naught to do but embrace her grim teachings, trading short term uncomfortableness for unknowable longterm gains. Standing before them was another dreamer of an adventurer, waiting for his kin to return, as so many did across the realm. They could not all be Warriors of Light, triumphing over great evils, welcomed home to open arms and lavish feasts. Failure was a stark reality, death the end that awaited them all.

To nudge him along, Venice dragged the weapon shipment so that it blocked the bulk of the body in question, sitting atop of it as she recovered her arm strength. One of the birds followed after its owner, flustering him as he thought of how to broach the subject.

“Your father isn’t coming home,” Emmanellain said, kneeling down to the Miqo’te’s level, ruffling his ears to soften the blow.

“The bad men got him killed, didn’t they?” there were no sobs, the boy leaned into the pats with the playful demeanor one admires in a house cat.

“Aye, they did. Can you tell us more about these men?” Emmanellain continued in a soft voice.  
“I was going to make dinner, they always made me do it,” the boy was losing his focus.

“You can come with us to Camp Tranquil, we’ll make sure the Wood Wailers get you back to safety,” Venice offered.

“These men, I don’t know where they come from, but it’s not from the forest. Papa said they were deserters but they didn’t look like any dessert I ever tasted,” he shuffled from foot to foot, dropping his skillet to the ground. “Redbellies aren’t much better, kill more animals than they should. The men asked Papa to help them raid their camp, they got weapons out of it and the forest got dead Redbellies. Everyone wins.”

“But they kept raiding others in the woods, didn’t they?”

“Aye. The one with the dot on his head was the the angriest of the lot. Papa said we’d run off in the night when we could. I thought tonight was the night then everything got dark, felt like the trees were watching.”

“Odin."

“That’s just a spooky ghost story nobody truly believes in,” the Miqo’te balled up his fists and scrunched up his face in a brave expression, not so unlike Emmanellain’s had been.

“Let’s get you to some dry land, you weren’t complicit in this madness,” Venice encouraged the lad to follow after them as they returned to the caravan. The camp held nothing else for them, though she made a note of its location in case the Twin Adders sought to investigate.

“Not exactly the thieves I was hoping to attract,” Emmanellain said with a ragged yawn.

Having delivered the boy to the guards, they were finally free to make camp of their own for the night. They settled on an overgrown hollow between two ancient trees, best they were liable to get with the floodwaters hampering their efforts.

“If there are more bands of deserters, the Adders will have their hands full,” Venice shrugged. “But not our problem. How are you holding up?”

“The Miqo’te boy, he had such high hopes, didn’t he? Thought he was safe, had no idea what really lay out there,” Emmanellain was lost in thought. “I won’t be taking anything for granted for awhile.”

It was a tight fit for two adults and their slumbering bos, the caravan was turned so that its contents were visible from within. The rock-ringed firepit was barely larger than the handful of kindling they had left over, serving more as a light source than a heat source which was just as well, for Emmanellain was straining against the ensuing humidity.

“Call me a sobbing nursemaid if you must, but this water getting into the inner layers of my armour is deeply unpleasant,” Emmanellain said before sneezing quite loudly, “I think I’m coming down with a cold too.”

“Whiny little bitch,” Venice corrected him.

“Come again?” he asked, minorly offended.

“That is the expression you’re looking for, brother.”

“Where do you learn these crude turns of phrase?”

“Mostly back in Garlemald. A lot of free roaming folk talk like that. If you’re keen to hide your sense of privilege, you should try not sounding like you have any,” Venice boasted.

They were both bent down over the growing fire, shaking from head to foot.

“Teach me more, for I am eager to learn dear sister.”

“Aye, that I shall. But first, let me show you a neat trick for drying out your kit.”

With the various pieces of gear lining the rotting wooden walls of their shelter, the light luring them into a sense of complacency, they could finally breathe in the moist, fertile air. The storms had died down, Odin’s summoning had been put to rest once again. The highborn siblings hiding in the bog had nothing but energy to show for their misadventures.

Whether or not the bitter taste of mortality had dampened Emmanellain’s spirits was hard to confirm. Any remnants of dreariness had been systemically burnt away by his typical sunny disposition. He made idle conversation, almost unimpressed with the day’s events.

“Is that what you want Venice? The pompous servants, the dresses, the incessant expectations?”

“No, if you were all lowborn it’d suit me better to be honest,” she stretched in her rugged underarmour garments, blissfully glad for the lack of metal. “But it isn’t about me is it? I need to know that I can’t do this through actually seeing myself fail rather than assuming it cannot be done. It’s not a natural fit.

However, you cannot take that to mean that I do not care deeply for my own family. Whether highborn or low, you are worthy of my love. Each one of you and I hope in my service, I can show some of that back.”

“Love is the most simple and yet most singularly complicated concept that we attempt to comprehend.”

“Perhaps it is an action rather than an emotion, Emma. One you get better at over time like anything else that you devote yourself to. Like faith.”

He got up then to shift the branches so that the smoke would not overwhelm the flames. Still the heat aggravated him, he pulled off his tunic and was met with a jealous look from Venice who could not easily perform the same gesture. She wasn’t entirely sure where the line was drawn for family members related through adoption. All the same, the topic of love left her uneasy, she shifted so that she was sitting close to him.

“Sometimes we don’t realise how our story impact somebody else’s, sometimes our part diminishes or grows without our knowledge. It’s hard to keep it in perspective.  Every time I’ve fought a primal, I’ve had others at my side, locked in a mortal contest. Afterwards, I rarely cross paths with most of them again. But my Free Company and other associates?”

She thought back to the carefree adventures throwing themselves into their labours. Too long had she been away from Ishgard, too many familiar faces were turning into strangers. How she must have seemed to them, escorting a well-to-do young gentleman rather than confronting harsher realities alongside those who had given up so much to feed her willful appetite. Her equipment hadn’t languished in the interim but her network of relationships certainly had diminished.  

“You like to imagine people think about you when you’re not around but they don’t, they have their own stories to live and why should that bother me. I’ve been discovering who I am too long, by the time I see them next I won’t be the same person they knew. And they won’t be the same either. It almost makes it impossible to hold onto other people, to think of them as anything other than tools to help see your own goals done.

We are so much more than that, Emmanellain. Why do we behave with such shortsightedness?”

“Fury knows, Venice. But it is a notion I’ve had to contend with myself. Everyone thinks I’m a bumbling idiot, won’t even give me a chance to prove them wrong. There’s nothing I could have done to convince Lani, short of cutting my hair and dying it blue,” he sighed and leaned back. They both stared into the fire for a long while. “Are you in love with Ser Aymeric?”

“Yes,” she saw no reason to lie to him about it.

“Why haven’t you told him?”

_So many reasons, dear brother. Where do I even start?_

“My past relationships have all gone spectacularly wrong, mostly because I failed to see beyond my own needs. Either I loved too much or too little or the timing wasn’t appropriate or what have you. I can’t unleash that kind of hurt upon him, I will not cause more strife.”

“The fact that you are afraid to cause harm should say everything you need to know. You cannot live if you are afraid to die. Haurchefant taught me that. Whatever you’re afraid of, Venice, you need to kick its arse. That’s what you do best, isn’t it?”

“What if I am afraid of myself? Without the Blessing of Light, I would not be alive today, I would have no reason to be here..”

“That’s bullshit and you know it. The salvation of Ishgard was a two-person job, it could not have occurred with any less. Two courageous souls, so in sync with each other, intrinsically unified like heaven and earth. The unassailable bond of friendship bringing about the impossible.

From the moment you touched down on the Steps of Faith, on the backs of dragons no less!  it became obvious to us. Our mortal enemies made allies, they saw it too.Through you everyone else saw infinite possibilities, as if you and Ser Aymeric had given birth to a new world.

But your trip through Dravania was hardly the beginning, you were already bound before that step was taken, were you not? How fitting, the symbolism not lost upon me. Haurchefant loved him as you do. If that’s not the playful hand of fate, then I don’t know what is.”

What had stood out most about Haurchefant’s personality was his love for life, a sentiment he extended to all those around him. He had introduced the pair of them with glee, steadily his hand joining theirs. At the time, she hadn’t known whose expression he was more excited about

She thought back to her conversation with Estinien, how losing Ysayle was like losing a limb, Haurchefant was no different. Arguably, the pain was worse, deeply imbedded. Costly. Paralysing. More people had felt his loss. But none more than Aymeric who had known him longer, had more memories to dwell upon. Had been _in love_. Was willing to love again, her own problems seemed trite in comparison.

She curled up next to her brother, her head against his leg. Between the loneliness of seeing her previous friends and confronting an old hopeless sensation, she needed to be the one nurtured and comforted. He had been so courageous that day, like Haurchefant would have been at his age. To say her fear outloud, left her vulnerable. To say whom she loved outloud, brought her joy. The world had not ended with her admission.

“I have my own hurts that I’ve not shared with anyone and given he won’t share all of his, does he even trust me? Should he? What if I get it wrong, say the wrong thing or-”

“Mayhaps you should meet each other halfway, peace is bred from compromise.”

_Peace._

Aymeric had not mourned for his brother, he had not mourned for his father. It was not Ishgard doing him a disservice. Self-induced penance, oppressive amounts of stress beyond measure, pain without resolution. Part of him had never left the Vault, still thought the war was on, still thought Haurchefant was hearty and hale. If only she could find the key to release him from his own torment.

But Emmanellain, nubile soul of the next generation, had exhibited wisdom beyond his years. He wasn’t fighting alone, he never had been. Just because one did not see the end result did not mean nothing was being done. The Ishgardian people saw love that day on the Steps of Faith, they believed. She had to believe too. No sense talking about it when there was work to do.

“That it is, Bravestone. That it is.” The nickname floundered out with a second thought.

He draped his unused blanket around her, letting her snuggle in for a sleep while he took first watch. She resolved that the next time she saw Aymeric, she would lay herself out openly, fear be damned. For better or for worse, they had to reach for one another across the abyss, hold on tight, and allow faith to guide their hands.

She didn’t need to find a key, she _was_ the key. And perhaps, so was he.

\---

The rest of the journey into Eastern Thanalan’s grasslands remained devoid of any extraordinary events, for which Venice was reluctantly grateful. The thinning vegetation and slimming trees were a wonderfully eye-opening experience for a young man used to thick, reliable hardwoods. The dust in the air a browner version of the blank, wintery carpet which all Ishgardians had come to terms with since Dalamud’s downfall. Vicariously, his astonishment loosened her pensive mood.

Abundant wildlife, diminishing greenery, and the ever present, peaceful coasting of the Yug’ram river flowing down gouged out cliffs of sandstone, towards the underground aquifers and out to the bright blue waters of the sea. The pallet was more familiar to Venice whose home village exploited a similar clean river. It had been the only avenue to the rest of the world, feeding into the arteries of waterways that connected the Garlean outposts nestled in the mountains of Ilsabard’s otherwisely impenetrable interior.

They stopped at the appropriately named settlement of Highbridge, more of a checkpoint than anything, marking the the boundary between the lush Black Shroud and the encroaching savannahs, themselves a premonition to the harsh deserts to come. Sweeping vistas and bustling tourists, a stark contrast to cap off their trip through terrain that continued to harbour elusive threats within its shadows, just as Emmanellain had brazenly predicted.

The smile of being proven correct never faded from his smooth face. To Venice, it seemed an overly long and unnecessary venture that would lead only to fruitless enquiries within the desert’s domed metropolis. But some destinations were not the reward in themselves, she wouldn’t have missed the chance to see her brother through his abrupt transition. 

The cavernous yawn beneath the bridge was a view worthy of their time, especially with the formidable cityscape in the foreground. Behind them, concealing the most pristine waterfalls and fishing pools, like a watery shrine for the most stout of explorers to climb through, the citrus-coloured crystal formations reached like tendrils towards the sky, serving to bounce the sun’s rays in rainbows across the valley.

Emmanellain looked as if he had been transported to another planet, the wind swaying in his hair, the merchants begging for his coin. To them, he was a veteran adventurer just like his sister, nothing more and nothing less. The overdue heart-to-heart had lifted Venice’s pragmatic psyche, showing how much she had grown since forced to flee from the ruins of Central Thanalan. She had been effectively retracing her missteps the long way around.

A couple cups of light, aromatic Thanalan tea drowned in a healthy helping of aldgoat’s milk along with a plate heaped in pepper-infused grilled streetmeats, became the perfect compliment to their sparse, arid surrounds. 

The dryness lured them towards Ul’dah’s punctuating spires, airships flooded the skyways with boisterous activity. The refugee camps set outside the maingates remained in use, not all Ala Mhigans eager to start over for what must have felt like the millionth time. Those that had called Thanalan home had married into local families or set up competitive business that flew in the face of the wealthy Ul’dahn magnates, writing their own rules of trade.

\---

The rotting smell of unchecked capitalism greeted the pair of exhausted knights. Unsold produce lined the streets, melting in the sun’s blistering heat rather than being handed freely to those in need. If something could not be bought or sold in Ul’dah, it didn’t deserve to exist. Very few places elicited outright hatred from Venice but even Garlemald had mechanisms in place to allow for advancement. The rich grew richer, the poor resorted to indentured servitude to make ends meet, the sultana’s gardens continued to saturate in the vast majority of the desert’s fresh water.

Largest of the city-states by far and eagerly looking to expand into Ala Mhigo’s bleak heartland. A displaced people willing to do anything to survive became more cheap labour for the salt mines, garnishing the shakers on mahogany tables which they’d never eat from themselves. All the while, the Free Company adventurers came and went, reaping personal fortunes without needing to care about local politics. She had to remind herself that not long ago, Ishgard had appeared as an uptight, xenophobic nation itself. However, nothing could make her believe Ul’dah would undergo the same transformation, not even with the sultana’s best intentions.

Their first stop was near the main plaza along the Emerald Avenue, just past the populated Ruby Road exchange. The Immortal Flames’ barracks and headquarters was like an orderly island of decency amongst a shifting current of greed, its altruistic members joining for more reasons than lining their pockets. The caravan was taken around by two young recruits in their dusty blue and black uniforms to be catalogued and unloaded. The two of them could have wandered off then but instead decided try their luck at catching one of the higher-brass on duty, Venice taking advantage of her rank.

Emmanellain was appalled that a man of his status had to wait in the queue just like everyone else, humbly realising that the High Houses were an enigma outside of his home city. All they wanted was to chase up some names, hardly a formal request that required paperwork. Venice was impressed by the swelling rank and file, having expected many new recruits to choose the other two Grand Companies in lieu of the Flame General’s premature retirement.

She took the time to dispense traveler’s proverbs and useful tips that she had come to appreciate after her own early mishaps. Things like how to speak politely without coming across as a pompous twat, how to keep one’s coinpurse from being pickpocketed, when to tip and when not to, not giving the appearance of being a gullible simpleton when asking for directions, and so forth. He pretended to listen whilst admiring the various suits of protective, and often evocative, gear favoured by the company’s regulars.

A pushy Au'ra female was having a disagreement with one of the attendants, holding up the line as the sun reached its peak, the shading tarps failing to do their single job. Both siblings were growing impatient, still in several layers of Ishgardian steel and leather, sweat trickling down their faces and necks, some managing to defy gravity as it soaked Emmanellain's ears, causing him all sorts of irritation.

The adventurer kept reaching for her primitive axe, demanding respect through fear until a couple of Roegadyn gladiators came over to talk sense. Pink skin, sandy scales, an ever-twitching tail, Emmanellain couldn't find anything else more worthy of his attention. Her business concluded, she sauntered past with her nose in the air, flicking back her auburn bob, winking salaciously with her glowing blue eyes.

"She's way too old for you," Venice warned her salivating brother.

"Was that a fancy dress costume or actual armour? A metal bikini leaves nothing to the imagination!" he strained for one parting glance. "Whether dragon or woman, it matters not to me."

“Pray forgive me Father, I don’t know how he got the pox. I turned around for one second and there was a harem of women tending to his every whim, it could have been any one of them!” Venice said mockingly. “For that matter, he spent all of our coin, leaving us to be mugged in streets for his vainness.”

“Don’t give me that, old girl. I saw you eyeing the glossy, protruding abs of that aloof Duskwight monk in the corner,” he said pointedly, pulling his hair back into a long, hanging ponytail.

“They are such a rare treat these days,” she nodded sagely, folding her arms.

The last casual tryst she had with anyone was moons ago and unremarkable, more than the heat was causing her armour to itch as she thought about the Elezen in question. He continued to go through the stretches that enhanced his chi, too focused to acknowledge her growing appetite.

“Ahem!” someone cleared their throat beneath their feet. There stood Pipin Tarupin, presumably the new Flame General, in all his tiny glory, luscious locks framing his soft features. As far as Lalafells went, perhaps the only one Venice could trust. “I’m not interrupting a pair of surely heat-stricken nobles who would not be making untoward advances against innocent bystanders, am I?”

“Not at all, Pipin!” Venice bent down to give him a loose hug. “Am I glad to see you though, I didn’t think anyone would hear our enquiries today.”

“It’s been too long since you’ve trained your squad, Lieutenant,” he tried to put on a serious face, a smile breaking the ruse like a splash in a pool. “Come, let us get a cold one to ponder over.”

They followed after the Vice Marshal to his sparsely furnished office, once Raubahn’s glittering private quarters when he needed to be away from the palace. He poured them each a tall glass of pineapple juice and offered a tray of rolanberry cheesecakes, fresh out of the oven, “I always seem to accumulate too many of these, please take as many as you want.”

“Don’t mind if I do!” Emmanellain tucked right in, Venice thought about warning him about sweets while overheated but decided some lessons had to be learned through experience.

“When I saw both of your names on the list, I was sure it was a mistake. Why would two high profile persons be saddled with a mundane missive?” Pipin lounged back, almost at the same height as his guests while sitting down behind his desk.

“‘Twas my idea, ser. We needed to make sure the Adders were pulling their weight, turns out they haven’t been. But that is neither here nor there, everything ought to be in order as requested.”

“Aye, fine Ishgardian adamantite is appreciated when we can get it. Are you staying overly long?”

“Only as long as it takes to find some persons of interests from this, er, fine city of yours,” Venice choked a bit. Pipin laughed, knowing her disdain for his home.

“Hand over your list and I’ll see to it before my shift is done. Lord Emmanellain, this is your first visit it I trust, perhaps you’d like to accompany me around the barracks and training yards? See what paces your weapons are being put through by our elite crop, eh?”

“That sounds quite engaging,” Emmanellain beamed, his ego sufficiently stroked.

“I’ll busy myself with some personal errands that need running,” Venice finished her juice and got up. “Meet me back at the Quicksand when you’re done parading about. If you get lost, Pipin will set you right. And don’t wander far from the Adventurer’s Guild on your own.”

“Yes, yes sister. We’ll be quite alright!”

\---

Blissfully, the desert sun set beyond the high walls, Ul’dah’s night life revelers began crawling out of the woodwork to take advantage. The air was alive with voices, music, pipe smoke, and other pervasive sensations, all overwhelming one’s ability to let logic restrain their inebriated cravings. The call of material satisfaction urging fools to be parted from their needless coin.

Venice returned to the Adventurer’s Guild sporting her latest acquisitions. A strappy halter top in a subtle cerulean blue wave print paired with billowing Ala Mhigan-style white pants, lined on the sides by the same pattern in embroidered form, a modest pair of flat sandals in the same blue colour. Around her neck and arms were several beaded pieces, done in the fashion of the Steppes’ tribes, all tied together with a simple shoulder satchel made of marid leather and adorned in a cherry blossom motif. Atop her head sat a new pair of wide-rimmed sunnies, underneath her hair lazily thrown up into a messy ponytail.

She flopped down next to her armoured brother feeling satisfied with an afternoon of self-pampering. Once more, all was well in the world again.

“Get me anything?” he scoffed, cradling his water-downed mulled tea in case she tried to take a sip.

“I was going to but finding the appropriate size proved futile,” she pushed her remaining bags under the table. “Got some extra fabric though, could make you a swanky outfit out of it.”

“Bunch of good that will do now,” he sighed.

A mist was cooling the air, some aether-propelled machinery in the background keeping the clientele comfortable, encouraging long drinking sessions. She thought Emmanellain looked jubilant but could not discern if climate control was the source of his fortunes.

“Had a good day then?”

“Aye, and an even better evening, you might say,” a broad smile, a sip of drink as he motioned someone over. She looked over her shoulder to try and deduce his target.

“Oh? And here I was hoping to be your wingman tonight,” she pouted.

“My what?”

“Ah, might be a Garlean phrase, that. A wingman helps their partner in crime land a girl, or boy, of their fancy, usually through bullshitting or other subtle means of persuasion.”

“You’re welcome to watch me succeed without your interference.”

“Emi?” a petite, bubbly voice issued from below Venice’s line of sight.

“Miri!” he got up and made sure she had a chair at the table, politely talking down the patrons at the table next over who were intent on keeping it for themselves. They laughed and joked, having met Emmanellain earlier in the night in more sober states of mind. One of the Hyurs gave him an overzealous salute, the others gave similar gestures of encouragement.

“Is this your decorated sister, First Flame Lieutenant Lysander?” the young woman, little more than knee-height, held out her hand across the table.

“Venice is fine, I’m not a commissioned officer so no need for the titles,” she took the Lalafell’s childlike hand in her own and did her best not to break it.

“This is Mamira Mira, a graceful lady who has talked my ears off more times than once,” Emmanellain said, going a bit pink as he waited to see how the two would react to each other.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt your reunion, only to make sure we were still on for our morning appointment,” the Lalafell with the large, whipped curls, predominantly ginger in colour said.

Venice was trying to keep an open mind but between the sunburst pile of hair, the turquoise eyes (one was palm green, the other sea blue), a soft, snowy white complexion, the rhinestone-covered Riviera dress highlighted by bright red clogs, she kind of looked like a delectable dessert instead of a person.

“Absolutely, I wouldn’t miss it for all the sunrises in the world,” Emmanellain beamed.

“I gathered everything together in this envelop, I hope you find it useful. For now, enjoy the rest of the evening, it was a pleasure to meet you both!” she hopped off the chair, curtsied, and hurried off; the smitten Elezen sighing and picking absently at the faux flowers, unsure what to do with himself.

“What’s in there, _Emi_?” Venice pointed while flagging down one of the waiters to take her drink order.

“I’ll show you later when we’re somewhere private, you’re going to lose your mind,” Emmanellain finished his tea then. “And don’t call me that!”

“So who is she?”

“A gardener for the palace, we’re having tea and crumpets in one of the sealed off sections where the young roses are budding, hopefully they’ll blossom as the sun hits them,” he answered, nearly breaking into song. The boys at the other table were cheering, clearly having watched the developing dalliance from its inception. “But more importantly, her ex-lover is the twin brother of a certain merchant.”

“I see,” Venice beckoned him close and discretely whispered into one ear, “Are you a virgin? Because you don’t have to settle for the first pretty face you see..”

He pulled back aghast with embarrassment, “Why is that relevant! We just met, what do you take me for?”

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of. But I mean, you’re nearly six fulms taller, it’d get weird..”

“Miri’s intel may be the missing link we’ve been after, don’t degrade her because of your false presumptions,” he said defensively.

“I’m not judging, I just want the best for you,” Venice sighed. The waiter arrived at long last, “Shots of arak please, and keep them coming until I’m blacked out.

\---

The next night, the two knights were peering in the dim light of the Aetheryte at the Ceruleum Processing Plant in Northern Thanalan, arguing over the map Mistress Mamira had provided in her packet of information.

“Are you sure this is right?”

“Not any more, this place is incredibly alien, not much grows or lives this close to raw ceruleum. Why would a botanist come here?”

“Now you’re asking the important questions, brother,” Venice looked around, the Flame patrols were sparse.

The landscape was akin to being on the desolate surface of the moon, the one still left in the sky anyway. Venice found the smell to be a mix of comforting and foreboding. Blue gold was the liquid fuel of the Empire that allowed them to conquer with their suppressive machines, driving all of their technology from the most basic light switch to flying fortresses.

“Should we ask someone for help?” he rubbed the back of his neck, eyes on the path that led towards the gates of Castrum Meridianum, a menacing complex of functioning Garlean forces. The road was dubbed Raubahn’s Push after the ferocious battle that Venice had taken part in, the name on the map seemed almost comical given recent forays into Gyr Abania.

“I’m suspecting this woman was luring you out here to do something less than pleasurable,” Venice said delicately. “But you don’t have to follow me to the rendezvous, I’ll uncover what she was up to, one way or another.”

That said, she put on her Ninja soulcrystal, transforming into tight-forming blackened clothes, the hint of blue and gold accents separating her from the darkness. She pulled up the hood and mask so only her eyes were showing, “How do I look?”

“The stuff of Eastern legends! I’m going with you though, that place is still operational and you might need a distraction to get back out,” Emmanellain said boldly, sword already out.

Gaining entry was obscenely easy. The pair snuck across the open field between the watchtowers, knocking out the occasional guard wandering too close. Eventually they had come by an access keycard. Venice toyed with the idea of taking on disguises but found following in the path of a Vanguard returning for self-maintenance more suitable, pocketing the card for later.

Once inside, it became apparent that the Garlean numbers were significantly smaller than when she had fought towards the Praetorium within, the very definition of a skeleton crew. Mostly its streets were haunted by automated, mechanical combatants, patrolling out of programming habit. The garrison showed all the signs of its last battle, nothing had been brought into repair or refurbish the damaged construction materials, not even new resources had been stashed away behind the walls.

“What should we be looking for?” Venice asked after another Vanguard continued silently past their hiding spot.

“Miri said her old partner was a salvager, did direct dealings with the soldiers here. I guess we try to find him or evidence that he is connected to our investigation.”

“Right, so sounds like I will be moving towards one of the terminals. The Garleans keep records on absolutely everything. If they know of him, he’ll be in the files.”

“Wait, that’s not what she said to-” Emmanellain was cut off by a smoke bomb as Venice made her dash for the nearest wall.

The rush of the shadows, the fear of getting caught, ninja training allowing one to leap and climb without regard for physics. It had been too long and Venice was enjoying toying with her favourite enemy, cat and mousing her way across the tops of fences and pipes, from one platform to the next. She didn’t need a map, she needed dead guards and their access codes, shoving bodies out of sight away from the searching spotlights.

Most terminals contained junk code, nothing of use. On a chance, she beelined for the lift that marked the first leg towards the Praetorium, the automated missile batteries looming overhead but offline, the watch on the wall absent. Casually she pondered why the Flames hadn’t taken the castrum back for themselves, it was serving neither side effectively. Down the lift, daggers out, the distant groan of a floating bot, scanning for dirt at best.

A couple of side rooms, a large control panel decorating most of an aerial tower with a dish on top. She tried a couple of codes until finally a universal one gained her limited access. Quickly, she popped in an encrypted tomestone, found conveniently on a nearby desk. Garleans were never good at internal secrecy, arrogant that their defences could not be breached from the outside let alone within.

She downloaded all the data she could, scanning the monitor for anything that might jump out while the process was underway. There was too much to sift through but one thing did stand out: a map of all the castrums in Eorzea, the one in Coerthas’ southeastern corner showed as “in progress”. Griffin’s Crossing. Another name was listed but no location was given.

Silently, she shadowed her way back to where she had left her brother, full glad that the distraction would not be necessary. When she arrived, he was joined by two Lalafells, one was Mamira Mira, the other an elderly gentleman with frazzled grey hair, clamped in fetters.

“I would have gotten away with it if weren’t for you kids!” he shouted at her approach. A couple of dismantled mechs lay around, most had bullet holes in their legs.

Venice took stock of Mamira’s changed appearance: she wore a saffron trenchcoat, high boots, cream-coloured tunic and adventurer leathers. A rosewood revolver with bronze fixtures was cradled under her belt, there was no aetherconverter on her hip. Cheerful botanist by day, intrepid treasure hunter by night.

“Uh, Bravestone?” she asked her brother for an explanation.

“I tried to tell you there was a schedule of his movements in the papers,” he shrugged, hefting the male Lalafell to his feet.

“You didn’t tell me this guy was even alive! Or his name for that matter, or anything useful,” she accused him.

“You didn’t give me the chance,” he shot back. Mamira patted his leg affectionately, luring him down for a peck on the cheek. He turned crimson and hugged her before putting their captive under one arm. “You kept your word, darling, and I shall keep mine.”

“Just make sure to return my cuffs when you’re done, Emi,” she giggled, the pair of buns in her hair shaking like miniature cinnamon rolls.

Venice sighed and followed after them, the mission successful if a bit odd.

\---

Eager to share the news before the trail ran cold, the siblings opted to teleport back to the garrison, Emmanellain offered no complaint about expediency. Venice was happier than she had been in quite some time. A meaningful breakthrough could potentially wrap-up several cumbersome cases, freeing up time for more leisurely matters.

While the overall excursion hadn’t gone to plan, she had gotten a lot out of it. She was blooming with restored confidence, sure of what she wanted for herself at long last. Perhaps there would be an opportunity to express her feelings after handing over the victorious report, a celebratory mood would set the stage just right.

Mid-afternoon was the height of activity for knights going about their routines, the crisp air punishing to any who stood still. They had only just arrived at the Aetheryte and already Honoroit was upon them, urgently ushering them to a quiet corner of the garrison’s office. His eyes flicked constantly back to Venice as he handed over stacks of administrative notes, memos, letters, and other miscellany to the returned commander.

“Can’t all this wait? We need to make haste for the Congregation as soon as possible,” Emmanellain frowned.

“No you don’t,” Honoroit said off-handedly, a knowing tone to his voice. He shifted his attention to Venice, “Pray forgive me, my lady. I’ve been given very strict instructions to pass along.. You are not to return to the Holy See until the Inquisition is finished with their enquiries. Not under any circumstances.”

“Who dares issue you with that authority?” Emmanellain was taken aback by his squire’s boldness.

“Nobody has any right to give me orders,” Venice bristled, her elation quickly turning to sourness. There was nothing she hated more than someone else controlling her actions.

“Ser Aymeric said you would say that,” he tried to evade their harsh glares. “I am simply doing as I was told,” he looked over at Emmanellain for support, clearly frightened by Venice’s growing ire. “The lord commander conveyed this in person, along with the letter which you are to read soon. Everything that you need to know should be outlined within, he trusted me personally to ensure that it would not get lost. I think, he might not have many he can trust right now, I am honoured that he holds me in such regard.”

Amongst the various papers were local news reports, the prevailing story about unrest due to the Inquisition’s hunt for heretics of all sorts. While the summoning ritual had been proven false, it had opened more doors leading to other questions. Cracks were showing in all administrative levels of the city, the hysteria was spreading like wildfire. Literal fires had been set, again. Pressure against compounding pressure, none were immune, least of all the one who had resorted to extreme measures to bring about a tentative, faltering peace. 

“It sounds like the Inquisition is nearing the last stage of their investigation. Enquiries behind closed doors never bode well. Brutal question and answer sessions where one must often be treated as guilty before they are proven innocent. The rules often go out the window, no wonder you are advised to keep your distance. When they get the scent of blood, they will not stop until they are satisfied with the haul of culprits,” Emmanellain tried to explain to the clueless Venice. His expression was grave, about as crestfallen as it had been when hearing of his brother’s death.

“What does any of this have to do with me?” Venice was annoyed, edging towards hostile.

“This morning, Ser Lucia was called in for testimony at the Tribunal,” Honoroit attempted to answer in a hushed whisper, making sure none would overhear. How he had come by the information was anybody’s guess and if any should find out, he was liable to be punished.

Venice’s mind scrambled to keep up, she read over the letter intended for her eyes alone but it provided no additional clues, just constant reassurances that the situation was escalating and that it would be easier to manage without her presence. His handwriting began to deteriorate towards the end, he couldn’t even convince himself that he wasn’t teetering on the brink. In the corner was a smudge of ink, uncharacteristic sloppiness.

What was Aymeric trying to say and why couldn’t he be open in a private letter?

“Should he lose Lucia, for whatever reason, he will be completely alone,” she spoke her thoughts aloud.

The implications of what they had on the mystery merchant could extend to several other connections, a cascading effect to relieve the burdens of many. But he wasn’t permitting her to get close enough to taste success. She hadn’t the chance to dig her heels in as Handeloup had warned. Nor had she been given luxury of time to look into Lucia’s detractors, another casualty.

Success was somewhere in the palm of her hand, falling through her fingers like loose sand pulled towards an ensuing torrent, a calamity of preventable destruction. It was as if she were watching a looming tsunami, ready to pound her to dust, just as she had come to replenish a small village’s food supply. Too little, too late. _Again_.

Abruptly, her positivity evaporated, gnawing dread filling her guts. She knew he had to maintain control as he saw fit, he needed to move from one agenda to the next without stopping to consider the toll it was taking on his body and soul. But doing so left no room for her, she had destabilised his efforts more than bringing aide in the end. Useless, as she had tried to tell Emmanellain while drenched to the bone, huddled by the warm safety of another.

The distractions of duty could only delay the inevitable for so long, waiting for the trauma to go away would not spare him more permanent damage. He had to know that, he was the smartest person she had the privilege to befriend. She had been so ready to shower him with praises and love, only to be denied and rejected when he needed her most. It hurt more than anything she could think of, more than any physical wound she had suffered.

Venice would not let anyone tell her what she could and could not do, not even him. She turned to run out the door, straight for the Gates of Judgement without so much as looking back. Heavy, chainmailed hands pushed against her shoulders, Emmanellain’s strength surprised her, shocking her senses back to reality.

“He isn’t alone, Venice. He never has been. Have faith, Ishgard will weather this storm. You must give us a chance to go through the motions, we may surprise you yet,” he fought hard to remain standing as she squirmed from his grip. “I swear to you, I will do everything I can to keep him from harm. And if that is not enough, I will convince Artoirel to do the same.”

“I am so.. _helpless_ ,” she felt the tears on her cheeks, Honoroit came up to hug her around the waist while Emmanellain clutched her to his chest.

“You are not, you must retain your courage. For Ser Aymeric, and for yourself,” he kissed her forehead and brushed her hair out of her face. In close proximity, she could smell a seasoned scent upon him that had not been there at the start of their journey. “You needn’t feel helpless, sister. Ishgard is coming alive, we are coming into our own.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  



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